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GETTING     ON    IN    THE    WORLD;     or, 

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with  a  Biographical  and  Critical  Introduction 
by  the  Translator.  1  volume.  12mo.  Pages  386. 
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LITERARY  STYLE, 


AND  OTHEE  ESSAYS. 


BY  WILLIAM   MATHEWS,  LL.D., 
// 

AUTHOR  or  "GETTING  ON  IN  THE  WORLD,"   " WORDS;  THEIR  USE  AND 
ABUSE,"  "ORATORY  AND  ORATORS,"  ETC.  ETC. 


CHICAGO: 
S.  C.  GRIGGS    AND    COMPANY. 

1881. 


COPYRIGHT,  1881, 
BY  S.  C.  GRIGGS  &  COMPANY. 


KMISHT 


DONOHUB  &  HBNNEBEBRT,   BINDERS. 


CONTENTS. 


I.  LITERARY  STYLE,     - 

II.  THE  DUTY  OF  PRAISE,  - 

III.  PERIODICAL  LITERATURE, 

IV.  "THE  BLUES"  AND  THEIR  REMEDY, 
V.  THE  MODESTY  OF  GENIUS,    - 

VI.  SENSITIVENESS  TO  CRITICISM, 

VII.  THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  REAL, 

VIII.  FAT  vs.  LEAN, 

IX.  MEMORY  AND  ITS  MARVELS, 

X.  FOOLS,    - 

XL  ANGLING, 

XII.  INTELLECTUAL  PLAYFULNESS, 

XIII.  A  PLEA  FOR  THE  ERRING,   - 

XIV.  THE  SECRET  OF  LONGEVITY, 
XV.  THE  SEASON  OF  TRAVEL,     - 

XVI.  HOT-HOUSE  EDUCATION, 

XVII.  ORIGINALITY, 

XVIII.  THE  ART  OF  LISTENING, 

XIX.  WHO  ARE  GENTLEMEN? 

XX.  OFFICE-SEEKING, 

XXI.  AMERICANISMS, 

XXII.  INDEX,   -  -  -  - 


PAGB 

5 

54 
61 
72 
85 
100 
111 
131 
141 
173 
182 
200 
207 
214 
234 
241 
251 
279 
287 
305 
320 
337 


56943 


LITERARY  STYLE. 


TTTITHIN  a  few  years  a  fresh  interest  has  been  awak- 
*  V  ened,  among  writers  and  critics,  in  literary  style. 
It  is  beginning  to  be  felt  more  keenly  than  for  a  long  time 
before,  that,  as  the  value  of  the  materials  of  a  building, 
whatever  their  cost,  depends  mainly  upon  the  skill  with 
which  they  are  put  together,  so  in  literary  architecture  it 
is  the  manner  in  which  the  ideas  are  fitted  together  into  a 
symmetrical  and  harmonious  whole,  as  well  as  adorned  and 
embellished,  that,  quite  as  much  as  the  ideas  themselves, 
constitutes  the  worth  of  an  essay,  an  oration,  or  a  poem. 
As  the  diamond  or  the  emerald, —  even  the  Kohinoor  itself, 
—  has  little  beauty  as  it  lies  in  the  mine,  but  must  be  freed 
from  its  incrustations,  and  cut  and  polished  by  the  lapidary, 
before  it  is  fit  to  blaze  in  the  coronet  of  a  queen,  or  to 
sparkle  on  the  breast  of  beauty,  so  thought  in  the  ore  has 
little  use  or  charm,  and  sparkles  and  captivates  only  when 
polished  and  set  in  cunning  sentences  by  the  literary  artist. 
But  there  is  another  and  more  potent  reason  for  the  grow 
ing  estimation  of  style.  As  an  instrument  for  winning  the 
public  attention,  for  saving  the  reader  all  needless  labor, 
and  for  keeping  a  hold  on  the  grateful  memory,  its  value 
cannot  be  easily  exaggerated.  A  hundred  years  ago,  in  the 
days  of  stage-coaches  and  ramage  presses,  when  literature 
did  not  come  to  us  in  bales,  and  to  be  a  man  of  one  book 
was  no  disgrace,  style  might  have  been  regarded  as  a  luxury; 
but  in  this  age  of  steam-presses  and  electrotype-printing, 


6  LITERARY    STYLE. 

with  its  thousand  distractions  from  study,  and  its  deluge  of 
new  publications  that  must  be  skimmed  by  all  who  would 
keep  abreast  with  the  intelligence  of  the  time,  this  element 
of  literature  is  sw?ftly  acquiring  a  new  utilitarian  value. 
When  W3  consider  that  Germany  alone  prints  15,000  books 
a  year;  that  one  library  only, —  the  National  at  Paris, — 
contains  150,000  acres  of  printed  paper;  that  in  one  rami 
fied  science,  e.  g.  chemistry,  the  student  needs  fourteen  years 
barely  to  overtake  knowledge  as  it  now  stands, —  while, 
nevertheless,  the  two  lobes  of  the  human  brain  are  not  a 
whit  larger  to-day  than  in  the  days  of  Adam;  that,  even 
after  deducting  all  the  old  books  which  the  process  of 
"natural  selection"  and  the  "survival  of  the  fittest"  has 
spared  us  from  reading,  the  remnant  even  of  literary  and 
other  masterpieces,  which  cannot  be  stormed  by  the  most 
valiant  reader,  but  must  be  acquired  by  slow  "  sap,"  is 
simply  appalling;  and,  finally,  that  even  the  labor-saving 
machinery  of  periodical  literature,  which  was  to  give  us 
condensations  and  essences  in  place  of  the  bulky  originals, 
is  already  overwhelming  us  with  an  inundation  of  its  own, 
—  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  manner  in  which  a  writer  com 
municates  his  ideas  is  hardly  less  important  than  the  ideas 
themselves. 

But  what,  it  may  be  asked,  do  we  mean  by  style?  We 
shall  not  attempt  any  technical  definition,  but  simply  say 
that  by  it  we  understand,  first  of  all,  such  a  choice  and 
arrangement  of  words  as  shall  convey  the  author's  meaning 
most  clearly  and  exactly,  in  the  logical  order  of  the  ideas; 
secondly,  such  a  balance  of  clause  and  structural  grace  of 
sentence  as  shall  satisfy  the  sense  of  beauty;  and,  lastly, 
such  a  propriety,  economy,  and  elegance  of  expression,  as 
shall  combine  business-like  brevity  with  artistic  beauty. 


LITERARY   STYLE.  7 

All  these  qualities  will  be  found  united  in  styles  of  the  highest 
order;  and  therefore  style  has  been  well  defined  as  an  artistic 
expedient  to  make  reading  easy,  and  to  perpetuate  the  life 
of  written  thought. 

Style,  in  this  sense,  is,  and  ever  has  been,  the  most  vital 
element  of  literary  immortality.  If  we  look  at  the  brief 
list  of  books  which,  among  the  millions  that  have  sunk  into 
oblivion,  have  kept  afloat  on  the  stream  of  time,  we  shall 
find  that  they  have  owed  their  buoyancy  to  this  quality. 
More  than  any  other,  it  is  a  writer's  own  property;  and  no 
one,  not  even  time  itself,  can  rob  him  of  it,  or  even  dimin 
ish  its  value.  Facts  may  be  forgotten,  learning  may  grow 
commonplace,  startling  truths  dwindle  into  mere  truisms; 
but  a  grand  or  beautiful  style  can  never  lose  its  freshness 
or  its  charm.  It  is  the  felicity  and  idiomatic  naivete  Q£  his 
diction  that  has  raised  the  little  fishing-book  of  Walton,  the 
linen-draper,  to  the  dignity  of  a  classic,  and  a  similar  charm 
keeps  the  writings  of  Addison  as  green  as  in  the  days  of 
Queen  Anne.  Even  works  of  transcendent  intellectual 
merit  may  fail  of  high  success  through  lack  of  this  prop 
erty;  while  works  of  second  and  even  third-rate  value, — 
works  which  swarm  with  pernicious  errors,  with  false 
statements  and  bad  logic, —  may  obtain  a  passport  to 
futurity  through  the  witchery  of  style.  The  crystal  clear 
ness  and  matchless  grace  of  Paley's  periods,  which  were  the 
envy  of  Coleridge,  continue  to  attract  readers,  in  spite  of 
his  antiquated  science  and  dangerous  philosophy;  and  a 
similar  remark  may  be  made  of  Bolingbroke.  The  racy, 
sinewy,  idiomatic  style  of  Cobbett,  the  greatest  master  of 
Saxon-English  in  this  century,  compels  attention  to  the 
arch-radical  to-day  as  it  compelled  attention  years  ago. 
Men  are  captivated  by  his  style,  who  are  shocked  alike  by 


LITERARY   STYLE. 


his  opinions  and  his  egotism,  and  offended  by  the  profusion 
of  italics  which,  like  ugly  finger-posts,  disfigure  his  page, 
and  emphasize  till  emphasis  loses  its  power.  For  the  pomp 
and  splendor  of  his  style,  "  glowing  with  oriental  color,  and 
rapid  as  a  charge  of  Arab  horse,"  even  more  than  for  his 
colossal  erudition,  is  Gibbon  admired;  it  is  "the  ordered 
march  of  his  lordly  prose,  stately  as  a  Roman  legion's,"  that 
is  the  secret  of  Macaulay's  charm;  and  it  is  the  unstudied 
grace  of  Hume's  periods  which  renders  him,  in  spite  of  his 
unfairness  and  defective  erudition,  in  spite  of  his  toryism 
and  infidelity,  the  popular  historian  of  England. 

Dr.  Johnson,  writing  in  the  "Idler"  upon  the  fate  of 
books,  declares  that  if  an  author  would  be  long  remem 
bered,  he  must  choose  a  theme  of  enduring  interest;  but 
the  interest  with  which  the  "  Provincial  Letters "  are  read 
to-day,  by  men  who  never  look  into  the  pages  of  the  "  Ram 
bler"  or  the  "Vanity  of  Human  Wishes,"  shows  that  the 
manner  in  which  a  subject  is  treated  is  often  of  more  im 
portance  than  the  matter.  It  is  one  of  the  most  signal 
triumphs  of  genius  that  it  can  thus  not  only  overcome  the 
disadvantages  of  a  topic  of  ephemeral  interest,  but  even 
give  permanent  popularity  to  works  which  the  progress  of 
knowledge  renders  imperfect;  that  it  can  so  stamp  itself 
upon  its  productions,  and  mould  them  into  beauty,  as  to 
make  men  unwilling  to  return  the  gold  to  the  melting-pot, 
and  work  it  up  afresh.  What  is  it  but  the  severe  and  ex 
quisite  beauty  of  their  form  which  has  given  such  vitality 
to  the  ancient  classics,  that  time,  which  "  antiquates  an 
tiquity  itself,"  has  left  them  untouched?  Why  do  we  never 
tire  of  lingering  over  the  pages  of  Virgil,  unless  we  are 
drawn  to  them  by  "  the  haunting  music  of  his  verse,  the 
rhythm  and  fall  of  his  language?  "  "  The  ancients  alone," 


LITERARY    STYLE.  9 

it  has  been  truly  said,  "  possessed  in  perfection  the  art  of 
embalming  thought.  The  severe  taste  which  surrounds 
them  has  operated  like  the  pure  air  of  Egypt  in  preserving 
the  sculptures  and  paintings  of  that  country;  where  travel 
ers  tell  us  that  the  traces  of  the  chisel  are  often  as  sharp, 
and  the  colors  of  the  paintings  as  bright,  as  if  the  artists 
had  quitted  their  work  but  yesterday." 

In  works  of  art,  or  pure  literature,  the  style  is  even 
more  important  than  the  thought,  for  the  reason  that  the 
style  is  the  artistic  part,  the  only  thing  in  which  the  writer 
can  show  originality.  The  raw  material  out  of  which 
essays,  poems  and  novels  are  made,  is  limited  in  quantity, 
and  easily  exhausted.  The  number  of  human  passions  upon 
which  changes  can  be  rung  is  very  small;  and  the  situa 
tions  to  which  their  play  gives  rise  may  be  counted  on  the 
fingers.  Love  returned  and  love  unrequited,  jealousy  and 
envy,  pride,  avarice,  generosity  and  revenge,  are  the  hinges 
upon  which  all  poems  and  romances  turn,  and  these  passions 
have  been  the  same  ever  since  Adam.  I  live,  I  love, —  I  am 
happy,  I  am  wretched, —  I  was  once  young, —  I  must  die, — 
are  very  simple  ideas,  of  which  no  one  can  claim  a  copy 
right;  yet  out  of  these  few  root-ideas  has  flowed  all  the 
poetry  the  world  knows,  and  all  that  it  ever  will  know. 
In  Homer  and  Virgil,  Plautus  and  Terence,  we  have  an 
epitome  of  all  the  men  and  women  on  the  planet,  and  the 
writer  who  would  add  to  their  number  must  either  repeat 
them  or  portray  monstrosities.  Joubert  felt  this  when  he 
cried:  "  Oh,  how  difficult  it  is  to  be  at  once  ingenious  and 
sensible!"  La  Bruyere,  long  before  him,  had  felt  it  when 
he  exclaimed:  "All  is  said,  and  one  comes  too  late,  now  that 
there  have  been  men  for  seven  thousand  years,  and  men 
that  have  thought."  It  is  common  to  talk  of  originality  as 


10  LITERARY   STYLE. 

the  distinguishing  mark  of  genius,  when,  on  the  contrary, 
it  is  essentially  receptive  and  passive  in  its  nature.  Its 
power  lies,  not  in  finding  out  new  material,  but  in  impart 
ing  new  life  to  whatever  it  discovers,  new  or  old ;  not  in 
creating  its  own  fuel,  but  in  fanning  its  collected  fuel  into 
a  flame.  All  the  thought,  the  stuff  or  substance,  of  a  new 
poem  or  essay,  is  necessarily  commonplace.  The  thing  said 
has  been  said  in  some  form  a  thousand  times  before;  the 
writer's  merit  lies  in  the  way  he  says  it.  We  talk,  indeed, 
of  creative  intellects,  but  only  Omnipotence  can  create; 
man  can  only  combine.  As  Praxiteles,  when  he  wrought 
his  statue  of  Venus,  did  not  produce  it  by  a  pure 
effort  of  the  imagination,  but  selected  the  most  beautiful 
parts  of  the  most  beautiful  figures  he  could  obtain  as 
models,  and  combined  them  into  a  harmonious  whole, 
so,  to  a  great  extent,  are  literary  masterpieces  produced. 
Wherein  lies  the  charm  of  the  "  golden-mouthed  "  Jeremy 
Taylor?  Is  it  in  the  absolute  novelty  of  his  thoughts?  — 
or  is  it  not  rather  in  the  fact  that,  as  De  Quincey  says,  old 
thoughts  are  surveyed  from  novel  stations  and  under 
various  angles,  and  a  field  absolutely  exhausted  throws  up 
eternally  fresh  verdure  under  the  fructifying  lava  of  burn 
ing  imagery?  Even  the  wizard  of  Avon  can  strictly  pro 
duce  nothing  new;  he  can  only  call  in  the  worn  coin  of 
thought,  melt  it  in  his  own  crucible,  and  issue  it  with  a 
fresh  superscription  and  an  increased  value. 

What  would  De  Quincey  be  without  his  style?  Bob  him 
of  the  dazzling  fence  of  his  rhetoric,  his  word-painting,  and 
rhythm, —  strip  him  of  his  organ-like  fugues,  his  majestic 
swells  and  dying  falls, —  leave  to  him  only  the  bare,  naked 
ideas  of  his  essays, —  and  he  will  be  De  Quincey  no  longer. 
It  would  be  like  robbing  the  rose  of  its  color  and  perfume, 


LITERAKY   STYLE.  11 

or  taking  from  an  autumnal  landscape  its  dreamy,  hazy 
atmosphere  and  its  gorgeous  dyes.  Take  the  finest  English 
classic,  The  Fairy  Queen,  L' Allegro  or  II  Penseroso, 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream;  strip  it  of  music,  color,  wit, 
alliteration, —  the  marriage  of  exquisite  thoughts  to  ex 
quisite  language, —  all  that  belongs  to  form  as  distinguished 
from  the  substance, —  and  what  will  the  residuum  be?  All 
the  ideas  in  these  works  are  as  old  as  creation.  They  were 
everywhere  in  the  air,  and  any  other  poet  had  as  good  a 
right  to  use  them  as  Milton,  Spenser  and  Shakspeare.  That 
critical  mouser,  the  Rev.  John  Mitford,  in  his  notes  to 
Gray's  poems,  has  shown  that  hardly  an  image,  an  epithet, 
or  even  a  line  in  them  originated  with  the  ostensible  author. 
Gray  cribbed  from  Pope,  Pope  from  Dryden,  Dryden  from 
Milton,  Milton  from  the  Elizabethan  classics,  they  from  the 
Latin  poets,  the  Latin  from  the  Greek,  and  so  on  till  we 
come  to  the  original  Prometheus,  who  stole  the  fire  directly 
from  Heaven.  But  does  this  lessen  the  merit  of  these 
authors?  Grant  that  the  finest  passages  in  poetry  are  to  a 
great  extent  but  embellished  recollections  of  other  men's 
productions;  does  this  detract  one  jot  or  tittle  from  the 
poet's  fame?  The  great  thinkers  of  every  age  do  not  differ 
from  the  little  ones  so  much  in  having  different  thoughts,  as 
in  sifting  classifying  and  focalizing  the  same  thoughts, 
and,  above  all,  in  giving  them  to  the  world  in  the  pearl  of 
exquisite  and  adequate  expression.  Give  to  two  painters 
the  same  pigments,  and  one  of  them  will  produce  a  "  Trans 
figuration,"  and  the  other  will  exhaust  his  genius  upon 
the  sign-board  of  a  country  tavern  ;  as  out  of  the  same 
stones  may  be  reared  the  most  beautiful  or  the  most  un 
sightly  of  edifices, —  the  Parthenon  of  Athens,  or  an  Ameri 
can  Court-House. 


12  LITERARY   STYLE. 

What  is  the  secret  of  the  popularity  of  our  leading 
journals?  Is  it  their  prodigious  wisdom,  their  prophetic 
sagacity,  the  breadth  and  accuracy  of  their  knowledge,  their 
depth  and  range  of  thought, —  in  short,  their  grasp  of  the 
themes  they  discuss?  No;  the  newspaper  which  each  man 
reads  with  the  most  delight  is  that  which  has  mastered  most 
perfectly  the  art  of  putting  things;  which  flatters  his  self- 
esteem  by  giving  to  his  own  inchoate  ideas  artistical  de 
velopment  and  expression;  which,  in  short,  is  a  mirror  in 
which  Jones  or  Brown  can  see  with  his  own  eyes  the 
Socrates  he  has  taken  himself  to  be. 

Perhaps  no  other  writer  of  the  day  has  more  powerfully- 
influenced  the  English-speaking  race  than  Carlyle.  Beyond 
all  other  living  men  he  has,  in  certain  important  respects, 
shaped  and  colored  the  thought  of  his  time.  As  a  historian, 
he  may  be  almost  said  to  have  revolutionized  the  French 
Revolution,  so  different  is  the  picture  which  other  writers 
have  given  us  from  that  which  blazes  upon  us  under  the 
lurid  torchlight  of  his  genius.  To  those  who  have  read 
his  great  prose  epic,  it  will  be  henceforth  impossible  to 
remember  the  scenes  he  has  described  through  any  other 
medium.  As  Helvellyn  and  Skiddaw  are  seen  now  only 
through  the  glamour  of  Wordsworth's  genius, — as  Jura  and 
Mont  Blanc  are  transfigured,  even  to  the  tourist,  by  the 
magic  of  Byron  and  Coleridge, —  so  to  Carlyle's  readers 
Danton  and  Robespierre,  Mirabeau  and  Tinville,  will  be 
forever  what  he  has  painted  them.  No  other  writer  equals 
the  great  Scotchman  in  the  Rembrandt-like  lights  and 
shadows  of  his  style.  While,  as  Mr.  McCarthy  says,  he  is 
endowed  with  a  marvelous  power  of  depicting  stormy  scenes 
and  rugged,  daring  natures,  yet  "at  times,  strange,  wild, 
piercing  notes  of  the  pathetic  are  heard  through  his  fierce 


LITERARY   STYLE.  13 

bursts  of  eloquence  like  the  wail  of  a  clarion  thrilling  be 
neath  the  blasts  of  a  storm."  His  pages  abound  in  pictures 
of  human  misery  sadder  than  poet  ever  drew,  more  vivid 
and  startling  than  artist  ever  painted.  In  his  conflict  with 
shams  and  quackeries  he  has  dealt  yeoman's  blows,  and 
made  the  bankrupt  institutions  of  England  ring  with  their 
own  hollowness.  What  is  the  secret  of  his  power?  Is  it 
the  absolute  novelty  of  his  thoughts?  In  no  great  writer 
of  equal  power  shall  we  find  such  an  absolute  dearth  of 
new  ideas.  The  gospel  of  noble  manhood  which  he  so 
passionately  preaches  is  as  old  as  Solomon.  Its  cardinal 
ideas  have  been  echoed  and  reechoed  through  the  ages  till 
they  have  become  the  stalest  of  truisms.  That  brains  are 
the  measure  of  worth;  that  duty,  without  reward,  is  the 
end  of  life;  that  "  work  is  worship1';  that  a  quack  is  a  False 
hood  incarnate;  that  on  a  lie  nothing  can  be  built;  that  the 
victim  of  wrong  suffers  less  than  the  wrong-doer;  that  man 
has  a  soul  which  cannot  be  satisfied  with  meats  or  drinks, 
fine  palaces  and  millions  of  money,  or  stars  and  ribands; 
this  is  the  one  single  peal  of  bells  upon  which  the  seer  of 
Chelsea  has  rung  a  succession  of  changes,  with  hardly  a 
note  of  variation,  for  over  half  a  century. 

Anything  more  musty  or  somniferous  than  these  utter 
ances,  so  far  as  their  substance  is  concerned,  can  hardly  be 
found  outside  of  Blair's  sermons.  Coming  from  a  common 
writer,  they  would  induce  a  sleepiness  which  neither  "poppy, 
mandragora,  nor  all  the  drowsy  sirups  of  the  world  "  could 
rival  in  producing.  But  preached  in  the  strong,  rugged 
words,  and  with  the  tremendous  emphasis  of  Carlyle, —  en 
forced  by  sensational  contrasts  and  epic  interrogations, — 
made  vivid  by  personification,  apostrophe,  hyperbole,  and 
enlivened  by  pictorial  illustration, —  these  old  saws,  which 


14  LITERARY   STYLE. 

are  really  the  essence  of  all  morality,  instead  of  making  us 
yawn,  startle  us  like  original  and  novel  fancies.  His  imt 
agination  transfigures  the  meanest  things,  and  conveys  the 
commonest  thoughts  in  words  that  haunt  the  memory. 
In  his  fine  characterizations  of  Schiller  and  Alfieri,  how 
admirably  he  contrasts  the  two  men:  "The  mind  of  the 
one  is  like  the  ocean,  beautiful  in  its  strength,  smiling 
in  the  radiance  of  summer,  and  washing  luxuriant  and 
romantic  shores;  that  of  the  other  is  like  some  black,  un 
fathomable  lake  placed  far  mid  the  melancholy  mountains; 
bleak,  solitary,  desolate,  but  girdled  with  grim  sky-piercing 
cliffs,  overshadowed  with  storms,  and  illuminated  only  by 
the  red  glare  of  the  lightning."  How  vividly  by  a  few  sug 
gestive  words  he  brings  Johnson  before  us, —  not  the  John 
son  of  Macaulay,  the  squalid,  unkempt  giant  in  dirty  linen, 
with  straining  eye-balls,  greedily  devouring  his  victuals, — 
not  the  husk  or  larvce  of  the  literary  leviathan,  the  poor 
scrofula-scarred  body  without  the  soul,  but  Johnson  "  with 
his  great  greedy  heart  and  unspeakable  chaos  of  thoughts; 
stalking  mournful  on  this  earth,  eagerly  devouring  what 
spiritual  thing  he  could  come  at," —  in  short,  the  grand  old 
moral  hero  as  he  is,  in  the  very  center  and  core  of  his 
being!  A  kind  of  grim  Cyclopean  humor  gives  additional 
pungency  to  Carlyle's  style,  which, — "  if  it  is  a  Joseph's  coat 
of  many  colors,  is  dyed  red  with  the  blood  of  passionate  con 
viction."  Cherishing,  and  even  parading,  an  utter  contempt 
for  literary  art,  he  sacrifices  truth  itself  to  be  artistical, 
and  is,  in  fact,  with  many  glaring  faults,  one  of  the  greatest 
literary  artists  of  the  time. 

Why,  to  take  an  opposite  illustration,  has  John  Neal,  in 
spite  of  his  acknowledged  genius,  been  so  speedily  forgotten 
by  the  public  whose  eye  he  once  so  dazzled?  —  why,  but 


LITERARY    STYLE.  15 

because,  holding  the  absurd  theory  that  a  man  should  write 
as  he  talks,-  and  despising  the  niceties  of  skill,  he  bestows 
no  artistic  finish  on  his  literary  gems,  but,  like  the  gorgeous 

East, 

"  showers  from  his  lap 
Barbaric  pearls  and  gold," 

with  all  their  incrustations  "thick  upon  them1'?  With  less 
prodigality  of  thought  and  more  patience  in  execution,  he 
might  have  won  a  broad  and  enduring  fame;  but,  as  it  is, 
he  is  known  to  but  few,  and  by  them  viewed  as  a  meteor  in 
the  literary  firmanent,  rather  than  as  a  fixed  star  or  luminous 
planet,  Washington  Irving  has  probably  less  genius  than 
Neal;  but  by  his  artistic  skill  he  would  make  more  of  a 
Scotch  pebble  than  Neal  of  the  crown  jewel  of  the  Emperor 
of  all  the  Russias. 

That  we  have  not  exaggerated  the  value  of  style, —  that 
it  is,  in  truth,  an  alchemy  which  can  transmute  the  basest 
metal  into  gold, —  will  appear  still  more  clearly  if  we  com 
pare  the  literatures  of  different  nations.  That  there  are 
national  as  well  as  individual  styles,  with  contrasts  equally 
salient  or  glaring,  is  known  to  every  scholar.  Metaphors 
and  similes  are  racy  of  the  soil  in  which  they  grow,  as  you 
taste,  it  is  said,  the  lava  in  the  vines  on  the  slopes  of 
Mtndi.  As  thinkers,  the  Germans  have  to-day  no  equals  on 
the  globe.  In  their  systems  of  philosophy  the  speculative 
intellect  of  our  race, —  its  power  of  long,  concatenated,  ex 
haustive  thinking, —  seems  to  have  reached  its  culmination. 
Never  content  with  a  surface  examination  of  any  subject, 
they  dig  down  to  the  "  hard  pan,"  the  eternal  granite  which 
underlies  all  the  other  strata  of  truth.  As  compilers  of 
dictionaries,  as  accumulators  of  facts,  as  producers  of 
thought  in  the  ore,  their  bookmakers  have  no  peers.  The 


16  LITERARY   STYLE. 

German  language,  too,  must  be  admitted  to  be  one  of  the 
most  powerful  instruments  of  thought  and  feeling  to  which 
human  wit  has  given  birth.  But  all  these  advantages  are, 
to  a  great  extent,  neutralized  by  the  frightful  heaviness  and 
incredible  clumsiness  of  the  German  literary  style.  Whether 
as  a  providential  protection  of  other  nations  against  the 
foggy  metaphysics  and  subtle  skepticism  of  that  country,  or 
because  to  have  given  it  a  genius  for  artistic  composition  as 
well  as  thought,  would  have  been  an  invidious  partiality,  it 
is  plain  that,  in  the  distribution  of  good  things,  the  advan 
tages  of  form  were  not  granted  to  the  Teutons.  In  Bacon's 
phrase,  they  are  "  the  Herculeses,  not  the  Adonises  of 
literature."  They  are,  with  a  few  noble  exceptions,  the 
hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water  for  all  the  other 
literatures  of  the  world.  The  writers  of  other  countries, 
being  blessed  more  or  less  with  the  synthetic  and  artistic 
power  which  they  lack,  pillage  mercilessly,  without  ac 
knowledgment,  the  storehouses  which  they  have  laboriously 
filled,  and  dressing  up  the  stolen  materials  in  attractive 
forms,  pass  them  off  as  their  own  property.  It  is  one  of 
the  paradoxes  of  literary  history,  that  a  people  who  have 
done  more  for  the  textual  accuracy  and  interpretation  of 
the  Greek  and  Roman  classics  than  all  the  other  European 
nations  put  together, — who  have  taught  the  world  the  classic 
tongues  with  pedagogic  authority, —  should  have  caught 
so  little  of  the  inspiration,  spirit,  and  style  of  those  eternal 
models. 

The  fatigue  which  the  German  style  inflicts  upon  the 
human  brain  is  even  greater  than  that  which  their  barbarous 
Gothic  letter,  a  relic  of  the  fifteenth  century,  blackening  all 
the  page,  inflicts  upon  the  eye.  The  principal  faults  of 
this  style  are  involution,  prolixity,  and  obscurity.  The 


LITERARY    STYLE.  17 

sentences  are  interminable  in  length,  stuffed  with  paren 
theses  within  parentheses,  and  as  full  of  folds  as  a  sleeping 
boa-constrictor.  Of  paragraphs,  of  beauty  in  the  balancing 
and  structure  of  periods,  and  of  the  art  by  which  a  succes 
sion  of  periods  may  modify  each  other,  the  German  prose- 
writer  has  apparently  no  conception.  Instead  of  breaking 
up  his  "  cubic  thought "  into  small  and  manageable  pieces, 
he  quarries  it  out  in  huge,  unwieldy  masses,  indifferent  to 
its  shape,  structure  or  polish.  He  gives  you  real  gold,  but 
it  is  gold  in  the  ore,  mingled  with  quartz,  dirt  and  sand, 
hardly  ever  gold  polished  into  splendor,  or  minted  into 
coin.  Every  German,  according  to  De  Quincey,  regards  a 
sentence  in  the  light  of  a  package,  and  a  package  not  for 
the  mail-coach,  but  for  the  wagon,  into  which  it  is  his  privi 
lege  to  crowd  as  much  as  he  possibly  can.  Having  framed 
a  sentence,  therefore,  he  next  proceeds  to  pack  it,  which  is 
effected  partly  by  unwieldy  tails  and  codicils,  but  chiefly  by 
enormous  parenthetic  involutions.  All  qualifications,  limita 
tions,  exceptions,  illustrations,  and  even  hints  and  insinua 
tions,  that  they  may  be  grasped  at  once  and  presented  in 
one  view,  are  "  stuffed  and  violently  rammed  into  the 
bowels  of  the  principal  proposition."  What  being  of  flesh 
and  blood,  with  average  lungs,  can  go  through  a  book  made 
up  of  such  sentences,  some  of  them  twenty  or  thirty  lines 
in  length,  with  hardly  a  break  or  a  solitary  semicolon  to 
relieve  the  eye  or  cheat  the  painful  journey,  without  gasp 
ing  for  breath,  and  utterly  forgetting  the  beginning,  es 
pecially  when  a  part  of  the  poor  dislocated  verb,  upon  which 
the  whole  meaning  of  the  sentence  hinges,  is  withheld  till 
the  close?  Our  countryman,  Rufus  Choate,  had  a  genius 
for  long  periods ;  his  eulogy  on  Webster  contains  one  which 
stretches  over  more  than  four  pages;  but  even  he  yields 


18  LITERAKY    STYLE. 

to  Kant.  It  is  said  that  some  of  the  latter's  sentences  have 
been  carefully  measured  by  a  carpenter's  rule,  and  found 
to  measure  two  feet  eight  by  six  inches.  Who,  but  a 
trained  intellectual  pedestrian,  a  Rowell  or  Weston,  could 
hope  to  travel  through  such  a  labyrinth  of  words,  in  which 
there  is  sometimes  no  halting-place  for  three  closely-printed 
octavo  pages,  without  being  footsore,  or  bursting  a  blood 
vessel?  Is  it  strange  that  other  peoples,  who  do  not  think 
longwindedness  excusable  because  Kant  has  shown  that  Time 
and  Space  have  no  actual  existence,  but  are  only  forms  of 
thought,  are  offended  by  a  literature  that  abounds  in  such 
Chinese  puzzles?  Can  we  wonder  that  the  German  bullion  of 
thought,  however  weighty  or  valuable,  has  to  be  coined  in 
France  before  it  can  pass  into  the  general  circulation  of  the 
world? 

In  direct  contrast  to  the  heavy,  dragging  German  style, 
is  the  brisk,  vivacious,  sparkling  style  of  the  French.  All 
the  qualities  which  the  Teutons  lack, —  form,  method,  pro 
portion,  grace,  refinement,  the  stamp  of  good  society, —  the 
Gallic  writers  have  in  abundance;  and  these  qualities  are 
found  not  only  in  the  masters,  like  Pascal,  Voltaire,  Courier, 
or  Sand,  but  in  the  second  and  third-class  writers,  like 
Taine  and  Prevost-Paradol.  Search  any  of  the  French 
writers  from  Montaigne  to  Renan,  and  you  will  have  to 
hunt  as  long  for  an  obscure  sentence  as  in  a  German  author 
for  a  clear  one.  Dip  where  you  will  into  their  pages,  you 
find  every  sentence  written  as  with  a  sunbeam.  They  state 
their  meaning  so  clearly,  that  not  only  can  you  not  mistake 
it,  but  you  feel  that  no  other  proper  collocation  of  words 
is  conceivable.  It  is  like  casting  to  a  statue, —  the  metal 
flows  into  its  mould,  and  is  there  fixed  forever.  If,  in  reading 
a  German  book,  you  seem  to  be  jolting  over  a  craggy  moun- 


LITERARY    STYLE.  19 

tain  road  in  one  of  their  lumbering  eilwagen,  ironically 
called  "  post-haste  "  chaises,  in  reading  a  French  work  you 
seem  to  be  rolling  on  C  springs  along  a  velvety  turf,  or 
on  a  road  that  has  just  been  macadamized.  The  only  draw 
back  to  your  delight  is,  that  it  spoils  your  taste  for  other 
writing ;  after  sipping  Chateau-Margaux  at  its  most  velvety 
age,  the  mouth  puckers  at  Rhine  wine  or  Catawba.  This 
supremacy  of  the  French  style  is  so  generally  acknowledged, 
that  the  French  have  become  for  Europe  the  interpreters 
of  other  races  to  each  other.  They  are  the  Jews  of  the 
intellectual  market, —  the  money  -  changers  and  brokers 
of  the  wealth  of  the  world.  The  great  merits  of  Sir 
William  Hamilton  were  unknown  to  his  countrymen  till 
they  were  revealed  by  the  kindly  pen  of  Cousin;  and 
Sydney  Smith  hardly  exaggerated  when  he  said  of  Dumont's 
translation  of  Bentham,  that  the  great  apostle  of  utilitarian 
ism  was  washed,  dressed,  and  forced  into  clean  linen  by  a 
Frenchman  before  he  was  intelligible  even  to  English 
Benthamites.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  French  liter 
ature  is  all  style;  that  its  writers  have  labored  so  ex 
clusively  to  make  the  language  a  perfect  vehicle  of  wit  and 
wisdom,  that  they  have  nothing  to  convey.  If  in  a  German 
work  the  meaning  is  entangled  in  the  words,  and  "you  can 
not  see  the  woods  for  the  trees,1'  in  the  French  work  the 
words  themselves  are  the  chief  object  of  attention.  But 
the  critic  who  says  this  is  surely  not  familiar  with  Pascal, 
Bossuet,  D'Alembert,  De  Stael,  De  Maistre,  Villemain.  In 
these,  and  many  other  writers  that  we  might  name,  there  is 
such  a  solidity  of  thought  with  an  exquisite  transparency  of 
style,  so  subtle  an  interfusion  of  sound  and  sense,  so  perfect 
an  equipoise  of  meaning  and  melody,  as  to  satisfy  alike  the 
artistic  taste  of  the  literary  connoisseur  and  the  deeper 


20  LITERARY    STYLE. 

cravings  of  the  thinker  and  the  scholar.  The  real  weak 
ness  of  the  French  to-day  is  their  Chinese  isolation  and 
exclusiveness,  their  ignorance  of  other  nations,  their  want 
of  cosmopolitan  breadth,  and  of  all  the  other  qualities  which 
men  that  hug  their  own  firesides, —  that  live,  as  Rabelais 
says,  all  their  lives  in  a  barrel,  and  look  out  only  at  the 
bunghole, —  are  sure  to  lack.  Rooted  to  their  native  soil, 
seeing  no  countries  or  peoples,  and  despising  all  literatures 
but  their  own,  they  lose  the  comparative  standpoint  which, 
it  has  been  said  truly,  is  the  great  conquest  of  our  cent 
ury, —  which  has  revolutionized  history,  and  created  social 
science  and  the  science  of  language. 

There  is  a  saying  of  Buffon's  that  "  the  style  is  of  the 
man,1' —  not,  as  so  often  quoted,  "  the  style  is  the  man," — 
which  is  but  a  repetition  of  the  saying  of  Erasmus,  quails 
homo,  talis  oratio',  as  is  the  man,  so  is  his  speech.  As  we 
form  our  impressions  of  men,  not  so  much  from  what  they 
actually  say,  as  from  their  way  of  saying  it, —  their  looks, 
manner,  tones  of  voice,  and  other  peculiarities; — so  we 
catch  glimpses  of  an  author  between  the  lines,  and  detect 
his  idiosyncrasies  even  when  he  tries  hardest  to  hide  them. 
The  latent  disposition  of  the  man  peeps  through  his  words, 
in  spite  of  himself,  and  vulgarity,  malignity,  and  littleness 
of  soul,  however  carefully  cloaked,  are  betrayed  by  the  very 
phrases  and  images  of  their  opposites.  Marivaux  declares 
that  style  has  a  sex ;  but  we  may  go  farther,  and  say  that 
literature  has  its  comparative  anatomy,  and  a  page  or  a 
paragraph  will  enable  a  skillful  hand  to  construct  the 
skeleton.  "  Every  sentence  of  the  great  writer,"  says  Alex 
ander  Smith,  "is  an  autograph.  If  Milton  had  endorsed 
a  bill  with  half-a-dozen  blank  verse  lines,  it  would  be 
as  good  as  his  name,  and  would  be  accepted  as  good  evi- 


LITERARY.  STYLE.  21 

dence  in  court."  How  plainly  do  we  see  in  the  swallow- 
like  gyrations  of  Montaigne's  style  the  very  veins,  muscles, 
and  tendons  of  his  moral  anatomy!  How  glaringly  he 
betrays  his  self-complacency  by  the  very  air  and  tone  of  his 
self-humiliations!  Again:  how  visibly  do  the  despotic  will, 
the  imperial  positiveness  and  the  oriental  imagination  of 
Napoleon  stamp  themselves  on  his  style, —  in  that  hurried, 
abrupt  rhythm,  under  which,  as  Sainte-Beuve  says,  we  feel 
palpitating  the  genius  of  action  and  the  demon  of  battles! 
What  perfect  simplicity  characterizes  the  writings,  as  it 
does  the  actions,  of  Julius  Csesar !  His  art  is  unconscious, 
as  the  highest  art  always  is,  and  his  style  has  been  well 
compared  by  Cicero  to  an  undraped  human  figure,  perfect 
in  all  its  lines  as  nature  made  it. 

How  grave,  courtly,  and  high-mannered,  how  politic  and 
guarded,  like  himself,  are  the  utterances  of  Bacon !  What 
serenity  of  temper  is  expressed  in  "the  sleepy  smile  that 
lies  so  benignly  on  the  sweet  and  serious  diction  of  Izaak 
Walton  ! "  What  haughtiness  and  savage  impatience  of 
contradiction, — what  egotism  and  contempt  of  conventional 
opinions, —  are  stamped  on  the  plain,  blunt  and  often  coarse 
periods  of  Swift;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  what  an  urbanity 
reveals  itself  in  the  almost  perfect  manner,  so  easy  and 
high-bred, —  courteous,  not  courtier-like,  as  Bulwer  says, — 
of  the  gentle  Addison !  It  has  been  happily  said  that  there 
is  no  gall  in  his  ink,  and,  if  it  kills,  it  is  after  the  manner 
of  those  perfumed  poisons  which  are  not  less  grateful  than 
deadly.  Again,  what  fierceness  breathes  in  the  short,  dagger- 
like  sentences  of  Junius;  and  how,  on  the  contrary,  the  shy 
ness  of  Lamb's  nature, —  his  love  of  quip,  and  whimsey,  and 
old  black-letter  authors, —  peeps  out  in  his  style,  with  its 
antique  words,  and  quaint  convolutions,  and  doublings  back 


22  LITERACY   STYLE. 

on  itself !  Dean  Swift  would  have  torn  to  pieces  a  lamb 
like  a  wolf;  but  the  loving  "  Elia"  would  have  tried  to  coax 
a  wolf  into  a  lamb.  How  quickly  "  South  is  discovered  by 
the  lash  of  a  sentence,  and  Andrews  by  the  mechanism  of 
his  exposition!"  Did  any  mirror,  even  of  French  plate 
glass,  ever  reflect  any  man's  outer  configuration  more  viv 
idly  and  distinctly  than  the  strange  inner  nature  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  is  mirrored  in  his  periods?  What  a  revela 
tion  we  have  of  his  inmost  self, —  what  a  picture  of  his  wit, 
imagination,  portentous  memory,  insatiable  curiosity,  "  hu 
morous  sadness,"  pedantry,  and  love  of  crotchets  and  hobbies, 
even  "a  whole  stable-full," — in  the  quaint  analogies,  the 
grotesque  fancies,  the  airy  paradoxes,  the  fine  and  dainty 
fretwork,  the  subtle  and  stately  music,  the  amazing  Latin- 
isms,  and  the  riotous  paradoxes  and  eloquent  epigrams  of 
the  old  knight's  style !  Again,  how  plainly  the  hard,  severe, 
antique  cast  of  Guizot's  intellect  is  seen  in  his  manner  of 
writing,  which  is  so  weighty  and  impressive,  but  never  pic 
turesque  or  playful !  How  fit  a  vehicle  is  it  for  the  thoughts 
of  that  lofty  mind  whose  ideas,  as  soon  as  they  enter  it,  lose 
their  freshness  and  become  antique, — of  whom  it  has  been 
said:  "That  which  he  has  known  only  since  morning  he 
appears  to  have  known  from  all  eternity!" 

If  a  man  is  a  sham  and  a  hypocrite,  his  manner  will  be 
sure  to  blab  against  him,  It  is  a  Frenchman,  not  a  Puritan, 
who  teaches  that  even  the  painter's  work  is  deteriorated  by 
his  life.  "What  must  the  artist  have  on  his  canvas?  That 
which  he  has  in  his  imagination.  What  can  he  have  in  his 
imagination?  That  which  he  has  in  his  life."  So  with  liter 
ature;  it  is  even  more  tell-tale  than  any  other  art.  How 
easily  do  we  distinguish  between  the  passages  which  came 
from  the  author's  heart  and  those  in  which  his  inspiration 


LITERARY   STYLE.  23 

failed!  What  thoughtful  reader  does  not  know  that  any 
doubt  or  dogmatism;  any  languor  in  feeling,  or  shallowness 
of  insight;  any  distraction  or  loss  of  interest  in  the  theme; 
any  weariness  of  work  or  insatiable  passion  for  it;  all  the 
shadows  of  his  soul,  and  all  the  intermissions  of  his  sensi 
bility, —  stamp  themselves  on  the  printed  page  as  distinctly 
as  if  the  writer  had  purposely  told  the  world  his  secrets? 
Even  when  a  writer  tries  to  make  a  mask  of  his  style,  he 
almost  inevitably  betrays  himself  by  a  pet  phrase  or  man 
nerism.,  like  Macaulay's  antitheses  or  Cicero's  esse  videatur. 
How  admirably,  with  one  stroke  of  the  pen,  did  Sydney 
Smith  characterize  Jeffrey,  when  he  wrote  to  a  friend: 
"  Jeffrey  has  been  here  with  his  adjectives,  which  always 
travel  with  him!"  How  vainly  does  Gibbon,  that  great 
master  of  the  art  of  sneering,  try  to  mask  his  hostility  to 
Christianity  by  suggestion  and  equivocation!  Instead  of 
asserting,  he  insinuates;  and  stabs  Christianity,  not  directly, 
but  by  side  thrusts  of  parenthesis,  innuendo,  and  implica 
tion. 

Again,  there  are  writers,  and  those,  too,  of  high  ability, 
who  betray  themselves  by  certain  tricks  and  devices  of 
style  which  are  purely  mechanical,  and  which,  by  care 
ful  study,  we  can  learn  and  imitate.  Whatever  the  witch 
ery  of  their  manner,  however  wondrous  their  triumphs 
over  the  difficulties  of  expression,  we  can  mark  the  process 
by  which  they  achieve  their  results  almost  as  easily  as  we 
can  note  the  manner  in  which  an  artisan  puts  together  the 
pieces  of  a  watch.  Macaulay,  for  example,  by  his  essays 
and  his  history,  has  won  a  popularity  almost  without 
parallel,  because  he  expresses  in  vivid  language  thoughts 
easy  to  grasp,  and  because  his  power  of  lucid,  swift, 
brilliant  statement  has  never  been  surpassed.  He  is,  too, 


24  LITEKARY   STYLE. 

a  remarkably  correct  writer,  uniting  splendor  and  pre 
cision  as  few  have  done  before.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
is  possessed  with  the  very  demon  of  mannerism,  and  his 
tricks  of  style  are  so  transparent  that  the  veriest  novice 
may  detect  them.  The  peculiar  swing  and  swell  of 
his  sentences,  the  epigrammatic  antitheses  and  balanced 
clauses,  the  short  sentences  between  the  long,  "that,  like 
the  fire  of  sharp-shooters  through  cannon,  break  the  vol 
ume  of  sound,"  are  not  the  product  of  the  highest  art. 
Though  pleasing  at  first,  they  tire  at  last  by  their  un 
shaded  brilliancy  and  unvarying  monotony.  They  remind 
one  of  the  measured  march  of  the  grenadier  to  the  music 
of  the  fife  and  drum,  rather  than  of  the  free  and  lofty 
movement  of  the  giant.  Again,  Macaulay's  hatred  of  pro 
nouns,  limitations,  and  qualifications;  the  lack  of  organic 
unity  in  his  sentences, —  of  flexibility,  airiness,  and  grace, — 
and  especially  of  those  reticences,  half-tones,  and  subtle 
interblendings  of  thought  which  are  among  the  lamps  of 
style;  and  last,  not  least,  his  Chinese  lack  of  perspective, 
and  his  fondness  for  exaggeration  and  startling  contrasts, 
greatly  detract  from  the  excellence  of  his  style.  As  he 
himself  says  of  Tacitus,  "  he  stimulates  till  stimulants  lose 
their  power."  Because  it  is  thus  obtrusive  by  its  bril 
liancy,  and  constantly  calls  attention  to  itself,  Macaulay's 
style  is  necessarily  second-rate.  The  writer  who  perpet 
ually  strikes  you  as  a  great  literary  artist  is  not  artist 
enough,  just  as  the  man  who  strikes  you  as  crafty  is 
never  crafty  enough,  because  he  cannot  hide  his  craft. 
The  painter  who  works  consciously,  and  who  is  always 
ready  with  a  reason  for  every  touch  of  his  brush,  instead 
of  laying  tint  on  tint  at  the  mandate  of  a  mysterious  in 
stinct,  we  may  be  sure  is  not  a  Raphael  or  a  Titian. 


LITERARY   STYLE.  25 

Shakspeare  has  no  style,  because  he  has  so  many  styles, — 
because  he  is  forever  coining  new  forms  of  expression, 
and  breaking  the  moulds  as  fast  as  they  are  coined. 

Here,  had  we  space,  we  should  like  to  speak  of  the 
serried  strength  of  Barrow  and  the  indignant  brevity  of 
Junius;  of  Burke,  the  materials  of  whose  many-colored 
style  were  gathered  from  the  accumulated  spoils  of  many 
tongues  and  of  all  ages;  of  Robert  Hall,  the  stately,  im 
perial  march  of  whose  sentences  was  fashioned  after  no 
model  of  ancient  or  modern  times, —  a  style  the  product 
not  of  art,  but  of  a  mind  full  to  bursting  with  intellect 
ual  riches,  and  which,  though  often  declamatory,  never 
wearies,  because  he  never  declaims  only, —  there  is  the 
bolt  as  well  as  the  thunder;  of  South,  Fuller,  and  Sydney 
Smith,  the  ivy-like  luxuriance  of  whose  wit  conceals  the 
robust  wisdom  about  which  it  coils  itself;  of  Walter  Sav 
age  Landor,  who  handles  the  heavy  weights  of  the  lan 
guage  as  a  juggler  his  balls;  of  Froude,  some  of  whose 
historical  pictures  are  among  the  triumphs  of  English 
prose;  of  Huxley,  in  whose  hands  the  hard,  granitic  vo 
cabulary  of  science  becomes  malleable  in  such  a  union 
of  sweetness  with  strength  as  to  realize  the  Saturnian 
prodigy  of  "honey  sweating  from  the  pores  of  oak";  of 
our  own  Everett,  whose  level  passages  are  never  tame, 
and  whose  fine  passages  are  never  superfine;  and,  above 
all,  of  the  three  great  masters  of  style,  De  Quincey,  Ruskin, 
and  Newman,  who  have  evoked,  as  with  an  enchanter's 
wand,  the  sweetness  and  strength  of  the  English  speech. 
Prof.  Newman's  diction,  polished  ad  ungnem,  is  the  very 
acme  of  simplicity  and  clearness;  but  how  the  colorless 
diamond  blade  flashes  as  he  brandishes  it  on  the  battle 
field  of  controversy!  Ask  the  ghost  of  poor  Kingsley,  if 


26  LITERARY   STYLE. 

you  doubt  its  edge!  If  we  must  go  to  other  writers  to 
see  the  full  breadth  and  swesp  of  our  language, —  the 
majestic  freedom  of  its  unfettered  movement, —  we  must 
go  to  Prof.  Newman  to  see  what  it  can  do  when  it  enters 
the  arena  a  trained  and  girded  athlete,  every  limb  de 
veloped  into  its  utmost  symmetry,  and  every  blow  and 
every  movement  directed  with  definite  purpose,  and  with 
most  clear-sighted  and  deadly  aim. 

Again,  how  vividly  are  the  seer-like  nature  and  the  ex 
aggerated  individualism  of  Emerson, —  his  serene,  Jove-like 
composure,  and  icy  calmness  of  temperament, —  manifested 
in  his  disconnected  sentences,  which  some  wit  has  compared 
to  Lucretius's  "  fortuitous  concourse  of  atoms!"  Of  all  the 
masters  of  language  (we  do  not  say  of  style),  he  is  the  least 
sequacious.  His  verbal  troops,  like  the  old  Continentals, 
his  townsmen,  who  fought  Pitcairn,  never  fire  in  companies, 
or  even  by  platoons,  but  each  "  on  his  own  hook,"  man  by 
man.  Individually  complete  and  self-poised,  like  his  ideal 
man,  his  sentences  are  combined  merely  by  the  accident  of 
juxtaposition,  and  touch  without  adhering,  like  marbles 
in  a  bag.  His  language  is  densely  suggestive,  and  abounds 
in  those  focalizing  words  and  turns  of  expression  peculiar 
to  our  day,  which  condense  many  rays  of  thought  into  one 
burning  phrase.  It  abounds,  too,  in  those  happy  phrases 
which  are 

"  New  as  if  brought  from  other  spheres, 
Yet  welcome  as  if  known  for  years." 

Hardly  any  writer  surpasses  Emerson  in  what  has  been 
called  the  "  polarization  of  language,"  by  which  effete  terms 
are  reinforced,  and  ordinary  words  are  put  to  novel  uses, 
and  charged  with  unusual  powers.  But  his  style  lacks 
repose,  and,  like  Seneca's,  wearies  by  excessive  epigram 


LITERARY    STYLE.  27 

and  point.  Its  main  defect  is,  that,  as  De  Quincey  says 
of  Hazlitt's  manner,  "  it  spreads  no  deep  diffusions  of  color, 
and  distributes  no  mighty  masses  of  shadow.  A  flash,  a 
solitary  flash,  and  all  is  gone."  It  is  said  that  Coleridge, 
when  told  that  Klopstock  was  the  German  Milton,  said: 
"A  very  German  Milton,  indeed!"  A  like  exclamation  is 
provoked,  when  one  hears  the  remark,  so  thoughtlessly 
made, —  than  which  nothing  marks  more  clearly  the  prev 
alent  insensibility  to  the  differences  of  style, —  that  Emer 
son  is  "  the  American  Carlyle."  As  well  might  one  com 
pare  the  gentle  gales  that  fan  lake  Walden  to  the  hoarse 
blast  that  blows  in  winter  from  Ben  Lomond;  the  stream 
that  ripples  along  the  Concord  meadows  "  with  propulsion, 
eddy,  and  sweet  recoil,"  to  the  brawling  and  turbid  High 
land  torrent;  the  notes  of  the  robin  to  the  scream  of  the 
northern  eagle;  or  the  cold,  pitiless  radiance  of  a  sunlit 
iceberg  to  the  lurid  glare  of  the  volcano,  blazing  with 
tyrannic  fury  through  the  silence  and  shadows  of  midnight, 
and  hurling"  its  sulphureous  blackness  against  the  starry 
canopy. 

Of  the  few  partial  exceptions  to  the  law  that  we  have 
mentioned,  Goldsmith  is  one  of  the  most  striking.  Never 
was  there  a  greater  chasm  between  the  man  and  the  writer. 
Why  is  it  that,  carousing  at  college  with  midnight  revelers 
and  ale-house  tipplers, —  fond  all  his  life  of  coarse  pleasures 
and  gambling, —  at  once  a  dandy  and  a  sloven  in  his  dress 
and  life, —  he  is  never  either  finical,  or  coarse  and  slovenly 
in  his  writing?  Whence  come  the  artless  but  unapproach 
able  graces  of  that  style,  as  chaste  as  it  is  musical  and 
fascinating?  Why  does  his  pen  never  for  a  moment  betray 
the  disorder  of  his  life?  "Like  the  squalid  silk- weaver, 
sending  forth  piece  after  piece  of  the  purest  white  tissue, 


28  LITERARY   SYTLE. 

• 

'  poor  Noll,'  "  says  an  English  writer,  "  sends  forth  from  his 
garret  only  the  most  snowy-white  products,  amid  circum 
stances  of  his  outer  life  which  strangely  contrast  with  his 
inner  life  of  thought.  Irish  to  the  backbone  in  his  tem 
perament  and  all  his  ways  of  life,  he  is  yet  English  in  al 
most  every  characteristic  of  his  writings." 

It  is  in  this  idiosyncratic  peculiarity,  this  indefinable 
something  which  distinguishes  one  writer  from  another,  and 
which  can  neither  be  imitated  nor  forged,  that  lies  the 
priceless  value  of  style.  It  is  not,  as  it  has  been  too  often 
regarded,  a  cloak  to  masquerade  in,  a  kind  of  ornament 
or  luxury  that  can  be  indulged  in  at  will, —  a  communi 
cable  trick  of  rhetoric  or  accent, —  but  the  pure  outcome 
of  the  writer's  nature,  the  utterance  of  his  own  indi 
viduality.  This  sensibility  of  language  to  the  impulses 
and  qualities  of  him  who  uses  it, —  its  flexibility  in  accom 
modating  itself  to  all  the  thoughts,  feelings,  imaginations 
and  aspirations  which  pass  within  him,  so  as  to  become  the 
faithful  expression  of  his  personality,  indicating  the  very 
pulsation  and  throbbing  of  his  intellect,  and  attending  on 
his  own  inward  world  of  thought  as  its  very  shadow, —  and, 
strangest,  perhaps,  of  all,  the  magical  power  it  has  to 
suggest  the  idea  or  mood  it  cannot  directly  convey,  and  to 
give  forth  an  aroma  which  no  analysis  of  word  or  expres 
sion  reveals, —  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  human  speech.  Be 
cause  language  is  thus  the  faithful  mirror  of  our  natures, 
because  expression  is  literally  the  pressing  out  into  palpable 
form  of  that  which  is  already  within  us,  it  is  plain  that 
nothing  can  be  more  foolish  than  imitation.  In  the  old 
text-books  of  rhetoric  it  used  to  be  stated,  in  the  words  of 
Johnson,  that  whoever  wished  to  obtain  a  perfect  style 
should  give  his  days  and  nights  to  the  study  of  Addison. 


LITERARY   STYLE.  29 

But  we  now  know  that  a  good  style  can  never  be  acquired 
by  aping  the  manner  of  another.  The  only  effect  of  such 
copying  is  to  annihilate  individuality  by  substituting  pro 
cess  for  inspiration,  mannerism  for  sincerity,  and  calcula 
tion  for  spontaneity.  It  was  because  ho  understood  this 
that  Rembrandt  had  such  a  horror  of  imitation,  and  con 
demned  his  pupils  to  solitary  study,  lest  they  should  bor 
row  one  from  another.  All  the  virtues  of  style  are,  in  their 
roots,  moral.  They  are  a  product,  a  reverberation,  of  the 
soul  itself,  and  can  no  more  be  artificially  acquired  than 
the  ring  of  silver  can  be  acquired  by  lead.  If  a  man  has  a 
vulgar  mind,  he  will  write  vulgarly;  if  a  noble  nature, 
he  will  write  nobly;  in  every  case,  the  beauty  or  ugliness 
of  his  moral  constitution,  the  force  and  keenness  or  the 
feebleness  of  his  logic,  will  be  imaged  in  his  sentences. 
Language,  as  Goldwin  Smith  says,  "  is  not  an  instrument 
into  which  if  a  fool  breathe  it  will  make  melody";  to 
which  we  may  add,  that  it  matters  little  that  your  violin 
is  a  genuine  Cremona,  and  the  warranted  workmanship  of 
Straduarius, — unless  you  have  the  music  of  Paganini  in 
your  soul,  with  his  masterly  touch  and  his  exquisite  nervous 
organism,  in  vain  will  you  seek  to  conjure  from  the  instru 
ment  the  startling  notes,  the  tones  of  ecstasy  or  anguish, 
which  the  great  magician  of  the  bow  evokes  from  its 
strings. 

Of  the  various  elements  of  the  literary  art,  the  most 
important  are  five,  namely:  simplicity,  freshness  or  attract 
iveness,  arrangement,  choice  of  words,  and  careful  prepara 
tion  and  finish.  We  might  have  added  clearness,  were  not  its 
necessity  obvious;  as  Dr.  Jortin  says,  "the  man  that  is  not 
intelligible  is  not  intelligent."  Our  space  will  not  allow  us 
to  dwell  upon  these  qualities,  and  we  must  content  ourselves 


30  LITERARY   STYLE. 

with  a  word  or  two.  Of  all  these  elements  of  good  writing, 
freshness  is  the  most  vital;  it  is  the  quality  which  is  felt 
when  we  turn  from  Blair's  page  to  Bushnell's,  from  Prescott 
to  Motley.  The  best  recipe  for  the  acquisition  of  this  qual 
ity  is  to  keep  one's  life  fresh  and  vigorous.  To  have  one's 
page  alive,  he  must  be  alive  himself.  He  must  be  con 
stantly  acquiring  fresh  thought;  else  he  will  only  dexter 
ously  repeat  himself, — become  his  own  echo.  We  have  not 
space  to  consider  the  next  or  logical  element  of  style,  im 
portant  as  it  is,  and  pass,  therefore,  to  the  choice  of  ivords, 
of  which  it  may  be  said  that  the  simplest  and  most  idiomatic 
are  generally  best.  Joubert  has  well  said  that  it  is  by 
means  of  familiar  words  that  style  takes  hold  of  the  reader 
and  gets  possession  of  him.  "  They  beget  confidence  in  the 
man  who  uses  them  because  they  show  that  the  author  has 
long  made  the  thought  or  the  feeling  expressed  his  mental 
food;  that  he  has  so  assimilated  and  familiarized  them,  that 
the  most  common  expressions  suffice  him  in  order  to  express 
ideas  which  have  become  every-day  ideas  to  him  by  the 
length  of  time  they  have  been  in  his  mind."  What  is  the 
secret  qf  Spurgeon's*  power?  Is  it  not  that  he  uses  the 
plain,  nervous,  sinewy  Saxon;  the  vocabulary,  not  of  books, 
but  of  the  fireside  and  the  market-place, —  not  of  the  uni 
versity,  but  of  the  universe?  "The  devil,"  he  once  said, 
"does  not  care  for  your  dialectics  and  eclectic  homilectics,  or 
German  objectives  and  subjectives;  but  pelt  him  with  Anglo- 
Saxon  in  the  name  of  God,  and  he  will  shift  his  quarters." 
In  France  the  least  lettered  people  make  use  of  the  same 
words  as  the  greatest  writers.  Malherbe  said  that  he  took 
his  words  from  the  porters  of  the  grain  market.  Stendhal 
had  such  a  horror  of  emphasis  that,  before  setting  himself 
to  write,  he  read  a  page  of  the  civil  code.  One  of  the  chief 


LITEBAKT   STYLE.  31 

faults  of  Gladstone,  as  a  writer,  is  a  kind  of  "  dim  magnifi 
cence  "  of  style;  he  has  a  vast  command  of  language  which 
is  grave  and  majestic,  but  of  vague  and  uncertain  meaning. 
But  what  is  meant  by  simplicity  of  style?  Does  it 
exclude  beauty  or  tasteful  ornamentation?  Is  the  best 
style  a  colorless  medium,  which,  like  good  glass,  only  lets 
the  thought  be  distinctly  seen,  or  may  it,  like  a  painted 
window  which  tinges  the  light  with  a  hundred  hues,  af 
ford  a  pleasure  apart  from  the  ideas  it  conveys?  "He 
was  so  well  dressed,1'  said  a  person  to  Beau  BrummeU," 
"that  everybody  turned  to  look  at  him."  "Then,1'  said 
Brummell,  "he  was  not  well  dressed.11  So  of  the  garb 
of  thought,  it  is  said  by  some  persons  that  it  is  most  per 
fect  when  it  attracts  no  attention  to  itself,  and  we  see 
only  the  ideas  which  it  habilitates.  What  is  the  distinc 
tive  excellence  of  Scott?  Is  it  not  that  we  rise  from  his 
works  with  a  most  vivid  idea  of  what  is  related,  and  yet 
are  unable  to  quote  a  single  phrase  in  the  entire  narra 
tion?  Well-dressed  men  and  women  are  not  those  whose 
minds  are  absorbed  in  the  art  of  dressing,  but  those  who 
give  simply  the  general  impression  that  they  are  well- 
dressed,  and  nothing  more.  We  do  not  look  to  tailors, 
milliners,  and  mantua-makers,  for  the  best  models  of  cos 
tume.  That  this  is  true  of  a  large  class  of  writings, — 
those  which  simply  convey  information,  or  seek  to  explain 
rather  than  to  suggest  or  symbolize  truth,  and  depict  it 
in  attractive  forms, —  all  persons  will  admit;  but  that  it 
is  true  of  other  kinds  of  composition, —  those  which  are 
generic  to  poetry,  and  address  themselves  to  the  imagina 
tion,  and  through  the  imagination  to  the  reason, —  we  are 
far  from  believing.  There  are  many  literary  compositions 
which,  if  summoned  to  give  an  account  of  themselves,  to 


32  LITERARY    STYLE. 

explain  their  raison  d'etre  upon  any  utilitarian  principles, 
would  be  sorely  puzzled.  It  is  something  above  all  prac 
tical  use,  like  the  song  of  the  lark,  the  colors  of  the  rain 
bow,  the  butterfly's  painted  wing,  or  the  burning  breast 
of  the  robin.  Of  all  such  writings  style  is  the  very 
essence.  Scientific  books  may  do  without  this  charm,  but 
these  must  please  or  go  to  the  trunk-maker's.  In  a  dwell 
ing-house  or  a  shop  we  are  content  with  plain  geomet 
rical  lines  and  rectangular  proportions.  But,  to  use  the 
illustration  of  another,  when  the  painter  puts  on  his  can 
vas  an  old  legendary  castle, —  some  illustration  of  a  scene 
which  heroes  have  trodden  or  poets  have  sung, —  we  not 
only  pardon,  but  expect  a  different  treatment.  Then  we 
are  delighted,  if  the  moss  and  the  ivy  creep  up  the  sides 
of  the  time-stained  structure, —  if  the  thunder-cloud  rests 
upon  the  ruined  battlements,  and  the  moonlight  streams 
through  the  clefts  of  the  crumbl'lng  walls,  and  we  catch 
sight  of  smooth  lawns  and  nooks  of  bright  garden,  and 
the  gleam  of  a  distant  river,  down  which  the  eye  loses 
itself  in  woods.  We  cannot  agree,  therefore,  with  those 
who  make  it  a  canon  of  style  that,  in  writing,  one's  only 
aim  should  be  to  express  his  ideas  as  simply  as  possible. 
He  should  also  try  to  express  them  as  vividly  and  as  ele 
gantly  as  possible.  Simplicity  is  no  more  inconsistent  with 
elegance  than  is  ornament  with  strength.  The  Damascus 
blade  cuts  none  the  less  keenly  because  it  is  polished,  nor 
is  a  column  less  strong  when  its  sides  are  fluted  and  its 
capital  carved.  The  plumage  that  makes  the  beauty  of 
the  eagle  supports  it  in  its  flight.  The  "Provincial  Let 
ters  "  and  the  writings  of  Courier  are  examples  of  perfect 
simplicity  and  of  perfect  style.  If  a  writer  has  sufficient 
wealth  of  imagination  to  justify  an  exhibition  of  his  riches, 


LITERARY   STYLE.  33 

we  need  not  fear  that  the  groundwork  of  good  sense  will 
be  slighter  for  the  delicate  arabesques  and  exquisite  tra 
ceries  with  which  he  beautifies  his  useful  products.  On 
the  contrary,  as  Bulwer  has  said,  "the  elegance  of  the 
ornament  not  unfrequently  attests  the  stoutness  of  the 
fabric.  Only  into  the  most  durable  tissues  did  the  Geno 
ese  embroiderers  weave  their  delicate  tissues  of  gold;  only 
on  their  hardest  steel  did  the  smiths  of  Milan  damaskeen 
the  gracious  phantasies  which  still  keep  their  armor  among 
the  heirlooms  of  royal  halls." 

To  say,  as  some  do,  that  the  all-sufficing  aim  of  writ 
ing  is  to  make  one's  self  understood  with  the  smallest  ex 
penditure  of  words,  is  to  adopt  a  Board  of  Trade  or  Corn 
Exchange  standard.  There  are  themes  which  require  that  we 
should  draw  upon  the  prismatic  powers  of  language,  and 
evoke  its  hidden  melodies.  Words  can  yield  a  music  as 
thrilling  as  the  strings  of  any  instrument;  they  are  suscepti 
ble  of  colors  more  gorgeous  than  the  hues  of  sunset;  they  are 
freighted  with  associations  of  feeling  which  have  gathered 
about  them  during  hundreds  of  years;  and,  therefore,  to 
use  them  for  the  conveyance  of  ideas  only,  as  one  conveys 
goods  in  a  wagon,  is  not  enough.  Such  a  rule,  if  adopted, 
would  reduce  all  our  literature  to  the  dull  level  of  a  Trav 
eler's  Guide, —  to  the  vocabulary  of  a  courier,  and  the  elo 
quence  of  an  almanac.  Arrangement  and  repetition,  har 
mony  and  illustration, —  every  grace  and  every  charm, — 
all  that  makes  "L'  Allegro"  and  the  "Castle  of  Indolence," 
"  The  Stones  of  Venice  "  and  "  The  Marble  Faun,"  what  they 
are, —  would  be  wanting.  The  cup  you  drink  from,  the 
dagger -hilt  you  handle,  are  not  more  useful  though 
they  be  chased  by  Benvenuto  Cellini;  but  was  Cellini's 
labor  useless?  The  truth  is,  however,  that  these  devices 


34  LITERARY    STYLE. 

and  beauties  of  style,  which  are  supposed  to  be  separable 
from  the  thought,  are  not  mere  distinct  decorations,  but  a 
part  of  its  vivid  presentation.  Even  in  reading  purely 
useful  works,  who  has  not  a  hundred  times  lamented  their 
lack  of  style?  Who  ever  read  Grote's  Greece  without 
wishing  that  its  author  had  known  something  of  the  ca 
dence  of  a  period,  or  Butler's  Analogy  without  wish 
ing  its  sentences  were  less  involved  and  elliptical?  Who 
can  doubt  that  Locke's  meaning  is  often  made  needlessly 
difficult  by  the  ruggedness  of  his  style,  and  that  many  of 
the  wrong  inferences  drawn  since  his  death  from  his 
system,  and  which  would  have  shocked  him  had  they 
been  published  in  his  lifetime,  were  due  to  that  lack  of 
verbal  precision  which  the  culture  of  euphony  insures  ? 
We  cannot  sympathize,  therefore,  with  the  feeling  of  the 
poet  Eogers,  whom  a  single  superfluous  word,  like  the  crum 
pled  rose-leaf  on  the  couch  of  the  princess,  made  restless  and 
captious.  It  was  one  of  his  peculiar  fancies  that  the  best 
writers  might  be  improved  by  condensation.  In  vain  did 
one  warn  him  that  to  strip  Jeremy  Taylor  or  Burke  of  their 
so-called  redundancies  overlaying  the  sense,  was  like  strip 
ping  a  tree  of  its  blossoms  and  foliage  in  order  to  bring 
out  the  massive  proportions  of  its  trunk.  "  There,"  he  ex 
claimed  one  evening,  after  condensing  one  of  Burke's  noblest 
passages  (in  which  every  word  has  its  appointed  task), 
"  there,  concentrated  as  it  now  is,  it  would  blow  up  a 
cathedral  ! " 

We  are  aware  that  there  are  persons  who  have  no  appre 
ciation  of  the  graces  of  literary  composition.  They  would 
have  every  sentence  trained  down  to  its  fighting  weight ; 
not  a  particle  of  adipose  tissue,  but  all  sinew  only,  tense, 
close-knit, —  for  use  and  not  for  beauty.  So  there  are  per- 


LITERAKY   STYLE.  35 

sons  who  cannot  feel  the  difference  between  a  sonata  of 
Beethoven  and  the  Battle -Cry  of  Freedom,  between  a 
gravestone-cutter's  cherub  and  the  masterpieces  of  Raphael. 
But  what  does  this  prove  ?  Only  that  they  lack  a  sense, 
that  is  all.  Napoleon  belonged  to  this  class.  "What  is 
called  style,  good  or  bad,"  said  he  to  Madame  de  Remusat, 
"does  not  affect  me.  I  care  only  for  the  force  of  the 
thought."  As  well  might  he  have  said:  "I  care  noth 
ing  for  the  arrangement  of  my  soldiers  in  battle  ;  I  care 
only  for  the  energy  with  which  they  fight."  The  fighting 
power  of  soldiers  depends  upon  the  tactical  skill  with 
which  they  are  handled;  and  the  force  of  ideas  depends 
upon  the  way  in  which  the  verbal  battalions  that  repre 
sent  them  are  marshalled  on  the  battle-fields  of  thought. 

The  last  element  of  style  we  have  named  is  complete 
ness  in  preparation  and  finish.  The  most  brilliant  intel 
lect  cannot  do  without  an  accumulated  fund  of  facts  and 
ideas.  Even  the  poet,  who  seems  neither  to  toil  nor  to 
spin, —  whose  creative  exuberance  appears  to  be  innate, — 
can  use  only  materials  which  have  been  stored  in  his  brain 
during  years  of  thought,  reading,  and  observation.  Before 
Johnson  began  the  Rambler  he  had  filled  a  common 
place  book  with  thoughts  for  his  essays.  Addison  amassed 
three  folios  of  manuscript  materials  before  he  began  the 
Spectator;  and  when  a  new  publication  wa,s  suggested 
to  him  after  the  Guardian  was  finished,  he  replied:  "I 
must  now  take  some  time  pour  me  delasser,  and  lay  in  fuel 
for  a  future  work."  Frederick  W.  Robertson  spent  his 
leisure  hours  in  the  study  of  geology,  chemistry,  and  other 
sciences,  to  gain  the  materials  of  thought  and  illustration, 
and  to  give  freshness  to  his  sermons;  and  John  Foster, 
for  the  same  purpose,  rambled  many  hours  in  the  woods 


36  LITERARY   STYLE. 

and  fields.  Scott  did  not  hesitate  to  spend  the  leisure  of  a 
week  in  settling  a  point  in  history,  or  in  gathering  up  the 
details  of  a  bit  of  scenery  which  he  wished  to  work  into 
a  poem  or  a  novel.  Again,  the  mastery  of  any  import 
ant  subject  demands  time.  It  cannot  be  accomplished  by 
pressure  or  cramming,  or  by  the  most  heroic  extempore 
endeavor.  The  subject  must  be  brooded  over  from  day  to 
day,  till,  by  the  half-conscious,  half-unconscious  processes 
of  thought,  all  that  is  unessential,  incongruous,  or  foreign, 
has  been  sloughed  off;  till  all  difficulties,  surveyed  again 
and  again  from  new  angles  of  vision,  have  been  resolved, 
and  that  which  was  at  first  but  a  faint  suggestion  of  truth, 
has  surrounded  its-elf,  by  a  kind  of  elective  affinity  of  ideas, 
with  appropriate  imagery  and  illustration,  and  stands  out, 
at  last,  in  bold  relief  and  in  full  proportions  before  the 
mental  eye.  Then  how  simple  and  lucid  the  statement, 
how  luminous  the  exposition !  The  stream  of  thought  runs 
so  clear  as  almost  to  seem  shallow;  it  glides  so  noise 
lessly  that  few  suspect  the  depth,  the  volume,  and  the 
majestic  sweep  and  force  of  its  movement.  It  is  because 
there  is  to-day  so  little  hard  thinking  that  we  have  so  little 
good  writing.  The  poverty  of  style  is  due  largely  to  the 
very  activity  and  restless  impatience  of  modern  thought. 
It  is  because  thought  and  feeling  do  not  have  a  brooding 
time, —  because  opinions  and  sentiments,  hastily  enter 
tained,  are  not  allowed  to  take  root  undisturbed  and  in 
silence,  and  to  gain  strength  from  mere  length  of  tenure, — 
that  so  few  writers  master  the  secret  of  apt  and  vivid  ex 
pression.  A  man  of  even  the  highest  ability  can  no  more 
say,  "  Go  to,  I  will  make  a  great  essay,  poem,  or  novel," 
than  he  can  say,  "  Go  to,  I  will  make  a  religion." 

Again,  besides  completeness  in  preparation,  there  must 


LITEKARY   STYLE.  37 

be  also  careful  revision.  The  history  of  literature  shows 
that  with  few  exceptions  the  greatest  writers  have  been  the 
most  severe  and  painstaking  in  revising  and  polishing  their 
compositions.  The  capacity  for  minute  refinement  in  detail 
and  infinite  loving  labor  has  been  justly  pronounced  an 
instinct  of  all  truly  artistic  genius.  Burke's  manuscript 
was  covered  with  interlineations  and  alterations;  and  not 
till  he  had  examined  half-a-dozen  proofs  of  his  Reflec 
tions  did  he  allow  it  to  go  to  press.  When  a  lady  asked 
Johnson,  after  he  had  elaborately  revised  his  early  papers 
in  the  Rambler,  whether  he  could  now  improve  any  of 
them,  he  replied:  "  Yes,  rnadam,  I  could  make  even  the  best 
of  them  better  still."  Addison  would  stop  the  press  to  in 
sert  a  preposition  or  conjunction.  Sterne  was  incessantly 
employed  for  six  months  in  perfecting  one  diminutive 
volume.  Gray  would  spend  a  week  upon  a  page.  Robert 
Hall  gave  as  a  reason  for  writing  so  little,  that  he  could  so 
rarely  realize  even  proximately  his  own  ideal  of  a  perfect 
style.  Buffon  made  eleven  draughts  of  his  Epoques  de  la 
Nature  before  he  sent  it  to  the  press;  and  he  assured  a 
friend  that  after  passing  fifty  years  at  his  desk,  he  was  still 
learning  to  write.  Bossuet's  manuscript  was  so  bleared 
with  interlineations  as  to  be  almost  illegible.  Cervantes 
took  twelve  years  to  write  the  second  part  of  Don  Quixote. 
It  is  true  that  Scott,  who  was  untiring  in  gathering  the 
materials  of  his  novels,  wrote  in  a  whirlwind  of  inspiration, 
and  never  spent  a  moment  with  the  file;  but  this,  instead 
of  justifying  the  neglect  of  revision,  only  explains  the 
slovenliness  of  much  of  his  composition.  His  writings 
abound  in  Scotticisms,  errors  in  grammar,  and  other  faults 
of  style.  When  finishing  the  Fair  Maid  of  Perth,  he 
was  troubled  how  to  pack  the  catastrophe  into  the  space 
2* 


38  LITERARY   STYLE. 

allotted  for  it.  "  There  is  no  help  for  it,"  he  said;  "  I  must 
make  a  tour  deforce,  and  annihilate  both  time  and  space." 
He  too  often  made  these  tours  de  force.  Beginning  his 
novels  with  no  definite  plan,  he  let  his  plots  construct  them 
selves,  the  result  of  which  was  that  his  conclusions  were 
often  hurried,  abrupt,  and  unsatisfactory. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  is  not  the  best  writing,  like  the 
best  painting,  spontaneous,  and  does  not  the  practised  be 
come  the  ready  hand?  Did  not  Cervantes  say  that  the  jests 
of  Sancho  fell  from  him  like  drops  of  rain  when  he  least 
thought  of  it,  and  do  not  the  works  of  Raphael  and  Rubens 
seem  to  have  cost  them,  as  Hazlitt  says,  no  more  labor  than 
if  they  "had  drawn  in  their  breath,  and  puffed  it  forth 
again"?  Are  not  many  fine  literary  productions  thrown 
off  like  the  beautiful  Dresden  Madonna,  which  Raphael 
painted  without  any  previous  studies  or  drawings?  We 
answer,  yes;  the  best  writing  is  spontaneous.,  but  it  is  the 
spontaneousness  of  a  second  and  disciplined  nature.  It  is 
the  experience  of  the  veteran  accomplishing  with  ease  what 
seemed  impossible  to  the  raw  recruit.  It  was  because 
Gibbon  wrote  slowly  "  until  he  had  got  his  one  tune  by 
heart,"  that  he  was  able  to  send  the  last  three  volumes  of 
the  Decline  and  Fall  in  the  first  draught  to  press.  It 
was  after  years  of  laborious  self-training  and  experience, 
that  Raphael  was  able  to  throw  his  whole  idea,  in  all  its 
perfection  and  completeness,  upon  the  canvas,  without  the 
necessity  of  realizing  it  by  piecemeal  in  intermediate  at 
tempts.  In  all  such  cases,  where  miracles  of  swiftness  seem 
to  have  been  performed,  the  miracle  will  melt,  if  we  scrutinize 
it  closely.  We  shall  find  that  the  picture  has  been  painted, 
and  the  book  written,  with  such  ease,  because  years  of 
study  and  practice  have  so  lubricated  the  mental  instru- 


LITERARY   STYLE.  39 

ments,  that,  when  the  motive  power  is  applied,  they  work, 
to  a  great  extent,  with  the  precision  and  regularity  of  a 
machine. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  one  may  dawdle  too 
much  over  his  compositions, — that  he  may  use  the  file  till 
it  weakens  them.  There  is  a  medium  between  the  care 
lessness  of  Lope  de  Vega,  who  wrote  a  hundred  plays  in 
as  many  days,  and  the  fastidiousness  of  the  poet  Dana,  of 
whom  Lowell  says  that  he  is  so  well  aware  how  things 
should  be  done,  that  "  his  own  works  displease  him  before 
they  are  begun " ;  between  the  excessive  caution  of  the 
ancient  orator  who  was  three  olympiads  in  writing  a  single 
oration,  and  the  reckless  haste  of  the  poet  whose  funeral 
pile  was  composed  of  his  own  productions.  Perhaps  the 
best  description  of  the  natural  manner  in  which  a  great 
work  comes  into  existence,  is  that  quoted  by  Hammerton 
from  Michelet.  The  French  writer  says  of  one  of  his  own 
books,  that  "  it  was  produced  ~by  the  heat  of  a  gentle  in 
cubation.  "  ("  Elle  s'est  fait  a  la  chaleur  d'une  douce  incu 
bation.") 

That  the  moral  character  of  a  writer  has  much  to  do  with 
the  quality  of  his  work,  can  hardly  be  doubted.  No  man 
who  stands  habitually  on  a  low  moral  and  spiritual  plane, 
can  produce  a  great  work  of  art,  whether  in  literature, 
sculpture,  or  painting.  Noble  thoughts  can  come  only  from 
a  noble  soul.  It  is  said  that  in  India  a  muslin  is  manufac 
tured  which  is  so  fine  that  it  has  received  the  poetic  name 
of  "  Woven  Wind."  When  laid  upon  the  grass  to  bleach, 
the  dew  makes  it  disappear.  It  used  to  be  spun  only  by 
native  women  who  had  been  trained  to  the  task  from 
infancy;  and  so  nice  was  the  sense  of  touch  required  for  the 
spinning  of  this  yarn,  that  they  were  constantly  waited 


40  LITERARY    STYLE. 

upon  by  a  retinue  of  servants,  whose  duty  it  was  to  relieve 
them  of  all  menial  offices  that  might  endanger  the  fine 
tactual  faculty  which  long  practice  and  seclusion  had  be 
stowed  on  their  delicate  finger-tips.  So  those  whose  calling 
it  is  to  spin  the  fine  thread  of  thought,  to  be  woven  in  the 
loom  of  the  mind  into  the  web  and  woof  of  a  literary  pro 
duction,  should  jealously  seclude  themselves  from  all  vulgar 
and  debasing  occupations, — all  that  can  hurt  the  delicacy  of 
their  minds,  or  blunt  those  fine  perceptions  of  truth  and 
beauty  which  can  be  acquired  by  those  only  who  have  been 
trained  to  the  quest  of  them  from  early  youth. 

We  sometimes  read  of  model  styles;  but  there  is  no 
model  style.  As  in  painting,  the  manner  which  we  ad 
mire  in  Albano  and  Vanderwerf  would  be  misplaced  in 
the  ceiling  of  the  Sistine  Chapel,  or  even  the  extended 
canvas  of  the  Transfiguration,  so  it  is  only  relatively, 
not  absolutely,  that  any  literary  style  can  be  said  to  be 
the  best.  Macaulay,  who  was  certainly  not  lacking  in 
literary  taste,  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  style  of  a 
magazine  or  review  article,  which  should  strike  at  the 
first  reading,  might  be  allowed  sometimes  to  be  even 
viciously  florid.  It  is  not  by  his  own  taste,  he  said,  but 
by  the  taste  of  the  fish,  that  the  angler  is  determined  in 
his  choice  of  bait.  That  is  the  best  style  relatively  to  the 
individual,  in  which  his  particular  cast  of  thought  best 
utters  itself,  and  in  which  the  peculiarity  of  the  man, 
that  which  differentiates  him  from  other  men,  has  the 
fullest  and  freest  play.  That  is  a  good  style  generally,  in 
which  the  words  are  vitalized  by  the  thought,  so  that  if 
you  cut  them  they  will  bleed;  in  which  the  language  is 
so  fresh  and  forceful  as  to  seem  to  have  been  just  created; 
which  is  so  elastic  that  it  accommodates  itself  unconsciously 


LITEKAKY    STYLE.  41 

to  all  the  sinuosities  of  the  thought,  so  that  the  thought 
and  the  expression  are  never  for  a  moment  separated,  but 
are  a  simultaneous  creation,  coined  at  one  stroke.  The 
perfect  writer,  so  far  from  having  any  one  ideal  style, 
will  have  a  hundred  styles,  shifting  and  varying  with  every 
variation  of  his  ideas  and  feelings.  His  instrument  of 
expression  will  not  be  a  pipe,  but  an  organ  with  many 
banks  of  keys  ;  capable  of  giving  expression  alike  to 
thoughts  that  require  only  mellifluous  cadences  and  glid 
ing  graces,  and  to  those  that  demand  diapason  grandeur 
or  trumpet  stop, —  to  the  complex  harmonies  of  a  Heroic 
Symphony,  or  the  tumultuous  movements  of  a  Hailstone 
Chorus. 

To  define  the  charm  of  style, —  to  show  why  the  same 
thought,  when  conveyed  in  one  man's  language,  is  cold 
and  commonplace,  and,  when  conveyed  in  another's,  is,  as 
Starr  King  says,  "a  rifle-shot  or  a  revelation,"  is  impos 
sible.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  a  magnetic  presence,  an  eagle 
eye,  a  commanding  attitude,  a  telling  gesture,  a  siren 
voice,  may  give  to  truths  when  spoken  a  force  or  a  charm 
which  they  lack  in  a  book.  "  But  how  it  is,"  as  the  same 
writer  says,  "that  words  locked  up  in  forms,  still  and 
stiff  in  sentences,  will  contrive  to  tip  a  wink  ;  how  a 
proposition  will  insinuate  more  skepticism  than  it  states; 
how  a  paragraph  will  drip  with  the  honey  of  love;  how 
a  phrase  will  trail  an  infinite  suggestion ;  how  a  page  can 
be  so  serene  or  so  gusty,  so  gorgeous  or  so  pallid,  so  sul 
try  or  so  cool,  as  to  lap  you  in  one  intellectual  climate 
or  its  opposite, —  who  has  fathomed  this  wonder?"  There 
is  a  mystery  in  style  of  which  we  cannot  pluck  out  the 
heart.  Like  that  of  beauty,  music,  or  a  delicious  odor, 
its  spell  is  subtle  and  impalpable,  and  baffles  all  our  at- 


42  LITERARY   STYLE. 

tempts  to  explain  it  in  words.  Like  that  of  fine  manners, 
it  is  indefinable,  yet  all-subduing,  and  is  the  issue  of  all 
the  mental  and  moral  qualities,  bearing  the  same  relation 
to  them  that  light  bears  to  the  sun,  or  perfume  to  the 
flower.  Not  even  the  writer  himself  can  explain  the  secret 
of  his  art.  In  the  works  of  all  the  great  masters  there 
are  certain  elements  which  are  a  mystery  to  themselves. 
In  the  frenzy  of  creation  they  instinctively  infuse  into 
their  productions  that  of  which  they  would  be  utterly  puz 
zled  to  give  an  account.  By  a  subtle,  mysterious  gift,  an 
intense  intuition,  which  pierces  beneath  all  surface  ap 
pearances,  and  goes  straight  to  the  core  of  an  object,  they 
lay  hold  of  the  essential  life,  the  inmost  heart,  of  a  scene, 
a  person,  or  a  situation,  and  paint  it  to  us  in  a  few  im 
mortal  words.  A  line,  a  phrase,  a  single  burning  term  or 
irradiating  word,  flashes  the  scene,  the  character  upon  us, 
and  it  lives  forever  in  the  memory.  It  is  so  in  sculpture, 
in  painting,  and  even  in  the  military  art.  When  Napo 
leon  was  asked  by  a  flatterer  of  his  generalship  how  he 
won  his  military  victories,  he  could  only  say  that  he  was 
fait  comme  $a. 

It  was  a  saying  of  Shenstone,  which  almost  everyone's 
experience  will  confirm,  that  the  lines  of  poetry,  the  periods 
of  prose,  and  even  the  texts  of  Scripture,  most  frequently 
recollected  and  quoted,  are  those  which  are  felt  to  be  pre 
eminently  musical.  There  are  writers  who  charm  us  by 
their  language,  apart  from  the  ideas  it  conveys.  There  is  a 
kind  of  mysterious  perfume  about  it,  a  delicious  aroma, 
which  we  keenly  enjoy,  but  for  which  we  cannot  account. 
Poetry  often  possesses  a  beauty  wholly  unconnected  with 
its  meaning.  Who  has  not  admired,  independently  of  the 
sense,  its  "jewels,  five  words  long,  that,  on  the  stretched 


LITERARY   STYLE.  43 

forefinger  of  all  time,  sparkle  forever  "  ?  There  are  verses 
and  snatches  of  song  that  continually  haunt  and  twitter 
about  the  memory,  as  in  summer  the  swallows  haunt  and 
twitter  about  the  eaves  of  our  dwelling.  Coleridge,  Shelley 
and  Poe  seem  to  have  written  some  verse  only  to  show  how 
superior  is  the  suggestion  of  sound  to  the  expression  of 
sense.  How  perfectly  in  Tennyson's  Lotus-Eaters  is  the 
dreamy  haze  of  the  enchanted  land  he  depicts  reflected  in 
the  verse  !  How  exquisitely  do  the  refinement,  the  senti 
ment,  the  lazy  skepticism  of  the  age,  find  expression  in  his 
numbers  !  "  No  stanza,"  says  a  critic,  "  but  is  a  symbol  of 
satiety;  no  word  but  breathes  itself  out  languidly  as  if 
utterly  used  up,  and  every  line  is  glutted  weariness."  So 
with  "  the  nectared  sweets"  of  Keats's  verse  ;  it  is  so  dainty 
and  luscious  that  "  it  makes  the  sense  of  satisfaction  ache 
with  the  unreachable  delicacy  of  its  epithets."  There  are 
passages  in  Milton,  Shakspeare,  and  Wordsworth,  in  which 
the  mere  cadence  of  the  words  is  by  itself  delicious  to  a 
delicate  ear,  though  we  cannot  tell  how  and  why.  We  are 
conscious  of  a  strange,  dreamy  sense  of  enjoyment,  such  as 
one  feels  when  listening  in  the  night-time  to  the  pattering 
of  rain  upon  the  roof,  or  when  lying  upon  the  grass  in  a 
June  evening,  while  a  brook  tinkles  over  stones  among  the 
sedges  and  trees.  Sir  Philip  Sidney  could  not  hear  the 
old  ballad  of  Chevy  Chase  without  his  blood  being  stirred 
as  by  the  sound  of  a  trumpet.  Shelley  took  fright  and 
fainted  the  first  time  he  heard  a  certain  magnificent  and 
terrible  passage  in  Christabel  recited,  and  Scott  tells 
us  that  the  music  of  that  poem  was  ever  murmuring  in 
his  ears.  Pope  could  never  read  certain  words  of  Priam 
in  Homer  without  bursting  into  tears;  Boyle  felt  a 
tremor  at  the  utterance  of  two  verses  of  Lucan  ;  and 


44  LITERARY    STYLE. 

Spence  declares  that  he  never  repeated  certain  lines  of 
delicate  modulation  without  a  shiver  in  his  blood  not  to 
be  expressed.  Who  is  not  sensible  of  certain  magical 
effects,  altogether  distinct  from  the  thoughts,  in  some 
of  Coleridge's  and  Shelley's  verse  ;  in  the  musical  ripple 
of  Irving's  words;  in  the  stealthy  charm  and  subtle  per 
fection  of  Thackeray's  and  Hawthorne's  periods;  in  the 
mellow,  autumnal  hue  which  falls  like  the  golden  lights 
of  harvest  aslant  the  pages  of  Alexander  Smith;  in  the 
grand  harmonies  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  Jeremy  Taylor, 
and  Ruskin;  and  in  the  orchestral  swells  and  crashes  of 
De  Quincey?  How  perfectly  the  impetuosity  of  Napier's 
style  corresponds  to  the  military  movements  he  describes! 
As  we  read  his  vivid  narrative  of  the  Peninsular  battles, 
we  seem,  it  has  been  said,  to  hear  the  tramp  of  the  charg 
ing  squadrons,  the  sharp  rattle  of  the  musquetry,  and  the 
booming  thunder  of  the  artillery.  Words  in  a  master's 
hands  seem  more  than  words;  he  seems  to  double  or 
quadruple  their  power  by  skill  in  using,  giving  them  a 
force  and  significance  which  in  the  dictionary  they  never 
possessed.  Yet,  mighty  as  is  the  sorcery  of  these  wizards  of 
words,  that  of  Shakspeare  is  still  greater.  The  marvel  of 
his  diction  is  its  immense  suggestiveness, —  the  mysterious 
synthesis  of  sound  and  sense,  of  meaning  and  associa 
tion,  which  characterizes  his  verse;  a  necromancy  to  which 
Emerson  alludes  in  a  passage  which  is  itself  an  illustration, 
almost,  of  the  thing  it  describes.  Speaking  of  the  impossi 
bility  of  acting  or  reciting  Shakspeare's  plays,  he  says  : 
"  The  recitation  begins,  when  lo !  one  golden  word  leaps 
out  immortal  from  all  this  painted  pedantry,  and  sweetly 
torments  us  with  invitations  to  its  own  inaccessible  homes." 
Hardly  less  surprising  than  this  suggestiveness  of 


LITERARY    STYLE.  45 

Shakspeare,  is  the  variety  of  rhythm  in  his  ten-syllable 
verse.  We  speak  sometimes  of  Shakspeare's  style;  but  we 
might  as  well  speak  of  the  style  of  Bumor  with  her  hundred 
tongues.  Shakspeare  has  a  multiplicity  of  styles,  varying 
with  the  ever-varying  character  of  his  themes.  The  Proteus 
of  the  dramatic  art,  he  identifies  himself  with  each  of  his 
characters  in  turn,  passing  from  one  to  another  like  the 
same  soul  animating  different  bodies.  Like  a  ventriloquist, 
he  throws  his  voice  into  other  men's  larynxes,  and  makes 
every  word  appear  to  come  from  the  person  whose  char 
acter  he  for  the  moment  assumes.  The  movement  and 
measure  of  Othello  and  the  Tempest,  Macbeth  and  the  Mid 
summer  Night's  Dream,  Lear  and  Coriolanus,  are  almost  as 
different  from  each  other  as  the  rhythm  of  them  all  from 
that  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher;  and  yet  in  every  case  the 
music  or  melody  is  a  subtle  accompaniment  to  the  sentiment 
that  ensouls  the  play.  Whoever  would  know  the  exhaust- 
less  riches  of  our  many-tongued  language,  its  capability  of 
expressing  the  daintiest  delicacies  and  subtlest  refinements 
of  thought,  as  well  as  the  grandest  emotions  that  can  thrill 
the  human  brain,  should  give  his  days  and  nights  to  the 
study  of  the  myriad-souled  poet.  It  may  be  doubted  whether 
there  is  any  inflection  of  harmony,  any  witchery  of  melody, 
from  the  warble  of  the  flute  and  the  low  thrill  of  the  flageolet 
to  the  trumpet-peal  or  the  deep  and  dreadful  sub-bass  of  the 
organ,  which  is  not  brought  out  in  the  familiar  or  the  pas 
sionate  tones  of  this  imperial  master. 

Style  is  often  called  the  dress  of  thought,  an  objectionable 
term  as  it  seems  to  imply  that  there  is  no  vital  connection 
between  the  two.  Style  is  not  a  robe  which  may  be  put  on 
or  off  at  will;  it  is  the  incarnation  of  the  thought.  It  is  the 
coefficient  without  which  the  thought  is  incomplete.  As 


46  LITEEARY   STYLE. 

words  without  ideas  are  soulless,  so  ideas  without  words  are 
shadowless  ghosts.  Analyze  any  masterpiece  of  literature, 
the  effect  of  which  is  not  merely  to  convey  information, 
or  to  establish  truth  by  argument,  and  you  will  find  that 
the  things  themselves  are  identified  with  the  very  phrases, 
words,  and  syllables,  in  which  they  are  communicated. 
True  as  this  is  of  prose,  it  is  doubly  true  of  poetry;  it  is  a 
linked  strain  throughout.  So  ethereal  and  evanescent  is  the 
poetic  spirit,  so  frail  and  fugitive  is  the  vehicle  in  which  it 
is  conveyed,  that,  as  a  fine  poet  has  said,  though  this  incon 
vertible  diction  may  be  as  durable  as  the  firmament,  and, 
like  the  firmament,  may  transmit  the  glories  vinlaid  in  it 
from  generation  to  generation,  yet,  if  you  unsettle  but  a 
word  in  it,  it  breaks  like  a  bubble,  and  the  imprisoned  spirit 
is  gone.  The  spell  of  the  great  magicians  of  language 
depends  upon  the  very  terms  they  use,  and  to  attempt  con 
juring  with  any  other  is  to  imitate  the  folly  of  Cassim  in  the 
Arabian  Nights,  who  cried  "  Open  Wheat, "  and  "  Open 
Barley  "  to  the  door  which  responded  only  to  "  Open  Sesame." 
Though  style  is  not  properly  the  dress  of  thought,  and 
it  degrades  it  to  consider  it  as  such,  there  is  yet  a  striking 
analogy  oftentimes  between  the  costume  of  a  period  and 
its  style.  Look  at  the  writers  of  the  Elizabethan  age  ; 
how  stiff  and  elaborate,  yet  how  picturesque  is  their  lit 
erary  garniture,  like  the  garniture  of  their  bodies!  The 
peaked  beard,  the  starched  collar,  the  trunk-hose,  and  the 
quilted  doublet  of  Bacon,  Sydney,  and  Spenser,  are  in 
singular  keeping  with  the  high  sentence,  the  quaint  fan 
cies,  and  the  rich  decorations  of  their  style.  In  Pope's 
day, —  the  day  of  powdered  queues  and  purple  -  velvet 
doublets,  of  beaux  with  cocked  hats  and  lace  ruffles,  and 
belles  with  patches  on  their  cheeks, —  men  dressed  their 


LITERARY   STYLE.  47 

thoughts  as  finically  as  they  did  their  bodies.  As  they 
carried  snuff-boxes  and  wore  rapiers,  so  they  put  titillating 
ingredients  into  their  styles,  and  stabbed  each  other  with 
epigrams.  To-day  dress, —  at  least,  men's  dress, —  is  neat, 
plain,  close-fitting,  business-like;  with  no  waste  of  ma 
terial,  no  ornament  to  please  the  eye,  nor  colors  to  attract 
attention;  and  such  are  the  qualities  of  our  literary  com 
position.  Our  style  is  to  that  of  the  golden  age  of  Eng 
lish  literature  what  the  frock-coat  and  the  stove-pipe  are 
to  the  doublet  and  the  plumed  hat. 

In  view  of  what  we  have  said,  even  though  very  in 
adequately,  of  the  value  of  style,  let  us  ask  if  it  does  not 
merit  the  most  careful  and  assiduous  cultivation?  The 
power  of  the  orator  is  mighty,  but  perishable.  His  words 
may  be  preserved,  but  the  attitude  and  the  look,  the  voice 
and  the  gesture,  the  fire  and  the  imagination  which  gave 
a  wizard's  spell  to  his  speech,  are  lost  forever.  The 
swords  of  the  champions  of  eloquence  are  buried  with 
them  in  the  grave.  Where  is  the  electric  oratory  of 
Chatham,  the  dithyrambic  melody  of  Grattan,  the  winged 
flame  of  Henry?  Gone, —  vanished  forever,  as  completely 
as  their  forms  from  the  banks  of  the  Thames  and  the 
streets  of  Dublin  and  Richmond.  Not  so  with  those  utter 
ances  which  the  printing-press  has  saved  from  destruction; 
framed  in  cunning  and  attractive  forms  by  a  master  of 
composition,  they  may  sway  the  world  when  the  tongue 
is  frozen  and  the  hand  is  paralyzed.  Committed  to  the 
frailest  of  substances,  which  a  baby's  hand  can  tear,  a 
drop  of  water  destroy,  they  repeat  and  perpetuate  them 
selves  through  successive  centuries,  in  defiance  of  all  the 
agencies  of  loss  and  decay.  It  is  an  inestimable  privilege 
to  be  able  to  hold  converse  with  the  mighty  dead  through 


48  LITERARY   STYLE. 

books, —  to  evoke  the  ghosts  of  Virgil  and  Dante,  Bacon 
and  Milton,  Moli^re  and  Pascal,  and  listen  to  their  win 
nowed  wisdom,  as  they  sit  by  our  firesides  and  descant 
upon  human  and  divine  things.  But  there  is  a  joy  which 
as  far  transcends  this  as  intellectual  activity  transcends 
passivity;  it  is  the  ecstasy  of  creation, —  the  joy  of  wreak 
ing  one's  thought  upon  expression, —  of  giving  utterance 
to  the  sentiment  that  has  long  haunted  the  brain,  and 
which  cries  passionately  for  utterance.  How  dull  and 
death-like  is  the  life  of  the  bookworm, —  of  the  mind  which 
has  always  absorbed  knowledge,  and  never  given  it  out! 
Who  can  wonder  that  so  many  cultivated  men  suffer  from 
mental  atrophy,  ennui,  and  melancholy, —  become  shy,  sus 
picious,  morbidly  self-reflecting  and  self-conscious, —  when 
year  after  year  they  hoard  information  with  miserly  greed, 
and  never  vitalize  it  by  imparting  it  to  others?  How 
many  studious  and  thoughtful  men,  like  the  poet  Gray, 
are  tormented  with  an  over-nice  fastidiousness,  which 
"freezes  the  genial  current  of  the  soul,"  and  extinguishes 
all  the  healthy  and  buoyant  activity  of  the  intellect,  making 
their  lives  as  sluggish  as  "  the  dull  weed  that  rots  by 
Lethe's  wharf,"  because  they  repress  the  natural  instinct 
of  creation,  instead  of  giving  to  the  world  (pardon  the 
phrase)  their  "level  best"  of  expression!  The  mother  of 
Goethe  tells  us  that  her  son,  whenever  he  had  a  grief, 
made  a  poem  on  it,  and  so  got  rid  of  it.  How  many  per 
sons  who  are  dying  of  "the  secret  wounds  which  bleed 
beneath  their  cloaks "  would  find  relief  in  giving  voice  to 
their  pains  in  song!  How  many  who  make  life  a  selfish 
paradise  would  experience  a  purer  happiness  if  by  apt 
tale,  or  play,  or  poem,  they  would  communicate  the  joys 


LITERARY    STYLE.  49 

of  their   deliciously   overburdened   souls    to   the   souls   of 
others ! 

The  popular  writer  holds  the  same  relation  to  the  public 
which  the  merchant  holds  to  the  consumer.  He  is  the 
mediator  between  the  speculative  thinker  and  the  uncul 
tured  man.  He  is  the  middle  man,  who  stands  between  the 
schools  and  the  market-place,  bringing  the  lettered  and  the 
unlettered  together,  and  interpreting  the  one  to  the  other. 
It  is  his  function  to  work  up  the  raw  material,  the  rough 
ore  of  thought,  into  attractive  forms,  and  by  so  doing  to 
indoctrinate  and  impress  the  great  mass  of  humanity.  He 
thus  contributes  to  that  collision  of  mind  with  mind,  that 
agitation  and  comparison  of  thought,  which  is  the  very  life 
and  soul  of  literature  and  history.  To  accomplish  this 
mission,  he  must  be  a  master  of  language, —  acquainted 
with  the  infinite  beauty  and  the  deepest,  subtlest  meanings 
of  words;  skilled  in  their  finest  sympathies;  and  able,  not 
only  to  arrange  them  in  logical  and  lucid  forms,  but  to 
extract  from  them  their  utmost  meaning,  suggestiveness, 
and  force.  A  man  who  has  something  to  say,  though  he 
says  it  ill,  may  be  read  once.  If  he  is  read  again,  it  will 
be  due  to  some  felicity  of  execution.  No  one  re-reads  a 
book  unless  drawn  to  it  and  lured  on  by  the  style,  which 
magnetizes  and  entrances  the  reader  like  a  siren,  compell 
ing  him  to  go  on  from  the  beginning  to  the  end.  To  be 
master  of  such  a  style, —  vigorous,  luminous,  flexible,  grace 
ful  and  musical, —  which  responds  to  every  mood  of  the 
writer  as  the  strings  or  keys  of  the  musical  instrument 
respond  to  the  touch  of  the  master's  fingers, —  to  have  a 
prompt  command  of  those  subtle,  penetrative  words  which 
touch  the  very  quick  of  truth,  as  well  as  of  those  winged 
words  and  necromantic  terms,  freighted  with  suggestion 
3 


50  LITERARY   STYLE. 

and  association,  which  are  like  pictures  to  the  eye,  and 
strains  of  music  to  the  ear, —  to  be  able  to  pour  into  lan 
guage  "  such  a  charm,  sweetness  so  penetrating,  energy  so 
puissant,11  that  men  will  be  compelled  to  listen,  and  listen 
ing  to  yield  their  wills, —  this  is  to  hold  a  wand  more 
powerful  than  magician  ever  waved,  a  sceptre  more  potent 
than  king  ever  wielded.  Style,  thus  viewed,  takes  rank 
with  the  fine  arts,  and,  as  such,  is  as  worthy  of  study  and 
admiration  as  those  material  forms  which  embody  the  con 
ceptions  of  Angelo,  Titian,  and  Raphael. 

In  conclusion,  we  are  aware  that  in  thus  urging  the 
claims  of  the  art  of  expression,  we  have  exposed  ourselves 
to  the  jest  of  Diderot  on  Beccaria,  that  he  had  written  a 
work  on  style  in  which  there  was  no  style;  but  one  may 
see  and  feel  the  beauty  of  works  of  art  which  he  can  never 
execute;  and  we  will  willingly  become  a  target  for  the 
critic's  shafts,  if  we  can  but  induce  any  of  our  readers, — 
especially  our  undergraduate  readers, —  to  study  the  mag 
nificent  mystery  of  words.  We  press  this  matter  the  more 
urgently  for  two  reasons:  1.  Because,  as  Prof.  Shedd  says, 
the  modern  mind,  especially  "  the  American  mind,  is  full 
of  matter,  and  overfull  of  force  .  .  .  The  Goth  needs  to 
become  an  artist."  2.  There  is  a  tendency  in  some  of  our 
colleges  to  neglect  rhetoric  as  a  synonym  for  the  shallow 
and  the  showy.  The  only  style  sanctioned  by  their  pro 
fessors  is  apparently  the  "colorless-correct,"  which  Julius 
Hare  called  Scotch-English,  and  which  Carlyle,  himself  a 
Scotchman,  likened  to  power-loom  weaving.  Its  great  aim, 
apparently,  is  to  avoid  all  impulse,  brilliancy,  and  surprise; 
and  its  ideal  is  reached  when  a  writer,  as  Coleridge  said 
of  Wordsworth,  is  "  austerely  accurate  in  the  use  of  words." 
Even  at  our  oldest  college,  where  compositions  were  for- 


LITERARY   STYLE.  51 

merly  required  every  fortnight  for  three  years,  only  half-a- 
dozen  essays  are  now  required  during  the  whole  four  years' 
course;  and  the  department  of  "Rhetoric  and  Oratory," 
so  long  glorified  by  an  Adams  and  a  Channing,  came  so 
near  to  extinction  a  few  years  ago,  that  we  are  told  it  only 
got  a  reprieve  at  the  very  scaffold,  at  the  intercession  of 
some  of  the  older  graduates.  Again,  there  are  persons  who, 
like  Karl  Hildebrand,  affirm  that  nothing  in  one's  native 
language,  but  grammar  and  spelling,  can  be  taught;  "I 
never  heard,"  says  he,  "  that  Pascal  and  Bossuet,  Swift  and 
Addison,  or  Lessing  and  Goethe,  passed  through  a  course 
of  stylistic  instruction  in  French,  English,  or  German;  and 
yet  they  are  supposed  not  to  have  written  these  languages 
so  very  badly."  So,  it  might  be  replied,  there  have  been 
men  in  every  calling, —  painters,  sculptors,  musicians,  archi 
tects, — who  have  mastered  their  art  without  technical  in 
struction.  But  the  example  of  these  prodigies  of  genius 
proves  nothing  in  regard  to  the  average  man.  It  is  true 
that  the  highest  secrets  of  a  good  style  cannot  be  taught, 
but  must  be  learned  by  each  man  for  himself,  pen  in 
hand;  that  the  knowledge  and  use  of  one's  native  language 
are  grasped,  not  deliberately,  but  "  by  a  thousand  uncon 
sciously  receptive  organs."  But  the  same  thing  is  true 
of  music,  painting,  and  all  the  other  arts,  in  the  acquisi 
tion  of  which  the  student  is  advised  to  begin  with  a  teacher. 
Let  the  undergraduate,  then,  begin  early  to  write, —  to 
write  while  his  faculties  are  plastic,  lest,  when  he  is  called 
to  posts  of  responsibility  and  honor,  he  have  to  take  up 
tlie  lament  of  Italy's  statesman,  Count  Cavour.  Bitterly 
did  he  lament  that  in  his  youthful  days  he  had  never 
been  taught  how  to  speak  and  write, — "  arts  which,"  said 
he,  "  require  a  degree  of  nicety  and  adaptability  in  par- 


52  LITERARY   STYLE. 

ticular  organs,  which  can  only  be  acquired  by  practice  in 
youth."  To  obtain  such  a  mastery  of  language  as  we 
have  described  is  the  privilege  of  but  few;  but  all  may 
make  an  approximation  to  it,  and  of  all  excellence,  here 
as  elsewhere,  the  first,  second,  and  last  secret  is  labor. 
Intercourse  with  men  of  culture,  listening  to  the  language 
of  the  common  people,  and  the  perusal  of  good  authors, 
it  has  been  truly  said,  are  the  basis  of  a  good  style;  and 
the  true  means  of  perfecting  it,  are  the  habit  of  thinking 
clearly,  conscientiousness  in  seeking  the  expression  that 
exactly  corresponds  to  one's  thoughts,  and  the  honesty  not 
to  write  when  one  has  nothing  to  say.*  Above  all  should 
it  be  remembered,  that  the  veins  of  golden  thought  do 
not  lie  on  the  surface  of  the  mind;  time  and  patience  are 
required  to  sink  the  shafts,  and  bring  out  the  glittering 
ore.  The  compositions  whose  subtle  grace  has  a  peren 
nial  charm,  which  we  sip  like  old  wine,  phrase  by  phrase, 
and  sentence  by  sentence,  till  their  delicate  aroma  and 
exquisite  flavor  diffuse  themselves  through  every  cell  of 
the  brain,  are  wrought  out,  not  under  "high  pressure,1' 
but  quietly,  leisurely,  in  the  dreamy  and  caressing  atmos 
phere  of  fancy.  They  are  the  mellow  vintage  of  a  ripe 
and  unforced  imagination.  The  fitness  of  our  language 
for  such  composition  needs  no  proof,  though,  perhaps,  in 
no  other  language  has  the  average  excellence  of  its  prose- 
writing  been  so  far  below  the  excellence  of  its  best  speci 
mens.  The  language  which,  at  the  very  beginning  of  its 
full  organization,  could  produce  the  linked  sweetness  of 
Sidney  and  the  "  mighty  line  "  of  Marlowe,  the  voluptuous 
beauty  of  Spenser  and  the  oceanic  melody  of  Shakspeare, 
and  which,  at  a  riper  age,  could  show  itself  an  adequate 

*  Karl  Hildebrand. 


LITEKAKY   STYLE.  53 

instrument  for  the  organ-like  harmonies  of  Milton  and 
the  matchless  symphonies  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne;  which 
could  give  full  and  fit  expression  to  the  fiery  energy  of 
Dry  den  and  the  epigrammatic  point  of  Pope,  to  the  forest- 
like  gloom  of  Young  and  the  passionate  outpourings  of 
Burns;  which  sustained  and  supported  the  tremulous  ele 
gance  and  husbanded  strength  of  Campbell,  the  broad- 
winged  sweep  of  Coleridge,  the  deep  sentiment  and  all- 
embracing  humanities  of  Wordsworth,  and  the  gorgeous 
emblazonry  of  Moore;  and  which  to-day,  in  the  plenitude 
of  its  powers,  responds  to  every  call  of  Tennyson,  Ruskin, 
Newman,  and  Froude, —  is  surely  equal  to  the  demands 
of  any  genius  that  may  yet  arise  to  tax  its  powers.  Spoken 
in  the  time  of  Elizabeth  by  a  million  fewer  persons  than  to 
day  speak  it  in  London  alone,  it  now  girdles  the  earth  with 
its  electric  chain  of  communication,  and  voices  the  thoughts 
of  a  hundred  million  of  souls.  It  has  crossed  the  peaks 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  has  invaded  South  America 
and  the  Sandwich  Islands;  it  is  advancing  with  giant 
strides  through  Africa  and  New  Zealand,  and  on  the  scorch 
ing  plains  of  India;  it  is  penetrating  the  wild  wastes  of 
Australia,  making  inroads  upon  China  and  Japan,  and  bids 
fair  to  become  the  dominant  language  of  the  civilized 
world.  Let  us  jealously  guard  its  purity,  maintain  its 
ancient  idioms,  and  develop  its  inexhaustible  resources, 
that  it  may  be  even  more  worthy  than  it  now  is  to  be 
the  mother-tongue,  not  only  of  the  two  great  brother 
nations  whose  precious  legacy  it  is,  but  of  the  whole  family 
of  man. 


THE  DUTY  OF  PRAISE. 


"  A  MONG  the  minor  duties  of  life,"  says  Sydney  Smith, 
-*—*-  "  I  hardly  know  any  more  important  than  that  of 
not  praising  where  praise  is  not  due.  Reputation  is  one  of 
the  prizes  for  which  men  contend;  it  is,  as  Mr.  Burke  calls 
it,  '  the  cheap  defense  and  ornament  of  nations,  and  the 
nurse  of  rnanly  exertions1 ;  it  produces  more  labor  and  more 
talent  than  twice  the  wealth  of  a  country  could  ever  rear 
up.  It  is  the  coin  of  genius,  and  it  is  the  imperious  duty 
of  every  man  to  bestow  it  with  the  most  scrupulous  justice 
and  the  wisest  economy.1'  Nothing  can  be  truer  than  this, 
yet  is  it  not  equally  true  that  among  the  minor  duties  of 
life  is  that  of  praising  where  praise  is  due?  Is  it  not  as 
important  that  we  should  admire  what  is  admirable  as 
that  we  should  despise  what  is  worthless?  The  world  is 
full  of  men,  women  and  children,  who  are  living  unhappily 
and  rusting  in  comparative  activity,  or  doing  but  a  tithe 
of  the  good  they  might  do,  for  want  of  a  little  judicious 
praise.  Having  no  faith  in  themselves,  they  need  an  as 
surance  of  their  capabilities  from  others.  The  very  fear 
of  failure  makes  their  failure  sure,  and  they  lose  their 
strength  when  it  is  not  recognized.  To  shy,  sensitive 
natures,  especially,  praise  is  a  vital  necessity.  They  need 
to  be  encouraged  and  caressed  as  truly  as  others  need  to 
be  lashed  and  spurred;  and  sincere  commendation  is  to 
them  at  once  a  tonic  and  a  cordial,  cheering  them  with  a 

64 


THE    DUTY   OF   PRAISE.  55 

flush    of  pleasant    feeling,  and    bracing    them   for  further 
good  work. 

Sainte  Beuve  tells  us  that  when  an  idea  occurred  for  the 
first  time  to  Lamennais,  he  believed  that  the  world  would 
hasten  to  ruin  unless  he  instantly  made  it  known  to  the 
world;  so  he  at  once  set  to  work  to  communicate  it.  During 
all  his  processes  and  applications,  all  that  he  did  and  undid, 
the  orchestra  of  pride  was  playing  in  a  low  tone,  deep  down 
and  at  a  distance  within  himself,  "  I  am  the  savior,  I  am  the 
savior.  "  It  is  a  popular  notion  that  such  self-esteem  is  a 
common,  if  not  a  universal,  weakness:  wo  believe  it  is  rare. 
We  are  confident  that  a  large  part  of  that  conduct  which  so 
annoys  us  in  our  fellow  sinners,  and  which  we  resist  in 
society,  and  laugh  at  out  of  it,  as  vanity  and  egotism,  is  the 
very  opposite,  being  only  an  uneasy  or  frantic  attempt  to 
win  from  others  an  assurance  of  what  one  himself  sorely 
doubts.  What  a  pity,  then,  that  men  in  their  various  deal 
ings  with  each  other  are  so  niggard  of  praise!  Why  do  we 
so  often  wait  till  our  loved  ones  are  torn  from  us  by  death 
before  we  give  full  expression  to  our  affection?  Of  what 
use  to  the  faithful  wife  whom  we  lay  in  the  grave,  are  the 
tears  we  shed  over  her,  the  endearing  terms  we  lavish  upon 
her  memory,  and  the  passionate  praises  of  her  virtues  with 
which  wo  vex  the  ears  of  friends?  She  whom  we  now  so 
deplore,  would  have  drunk  such  expressions  of  tenderness 
in  her  life-time  with  ineffable  delight;  but.  alas!  our  lips 
were  sealed,  and  now  our  words  cannot  reach  her.  There 
is  hardly  a  man  living  who  is  not  keenly  susceptible  to 
approbation  in  some  form;  and  yet  there  is  no  instrument 
of  power  over  the  affections  or  the  conduct  of  our  fellow 
beings  which  we  employ  so  grudgingly  as  that  which  is 
the  most  pleasing  and  the  most  efficacious  of  all.  Who  can 


56  THE    DUTY    OP    PRAISE. 

estimate  the  amount  of  good  that  might  be  accomplished 
in  our  schools,  in  our  families,  and  in  all  the  relations  of 
employer  and  employed,  were  we  as  quick  to  commend 
excellence  as  we  are  to  growl  and  scold  at  its  absence! 
Scolding  begets  fear,  praise  begets  love:  and  "not  only 
are  human  hearts  more  easily  governed  by  love  than  by 
fear,  but  fear  often  leads  less  to  the  correction  of  faults 
and  the  struggle  for  merits  than  toward  the  cunning 
concealment  of  the  one  and  the  sullen  discouragement  of 
the  other." 

But,  says  some  one,  is  not  praise  sometimes  dangerous? 
Yes,  and  so  is  blame;  so  are  knives  and  pistols  and  loco 
motives;  and  so  is  everything  useful;  but  would  you  ban 
ish  the  sunshine  because  it  sometimes  sets  forests  on  fire? 
No  doubt  it  is  poison  to  a  human  soul  to  breathe  the 
incense  of  praise  habitually;  and  we  may  be  sure  that  no 
man  ever  attains  to  complete  self-knowledge  until  he  has 
had  an  enemy.  In  the  Roman  Church  no  man  is  canonized 
until  his  claims  have  been  formally  investigated;  and  for 
this  purpose  a  Devil's  Attorney,  so-called,  is  appointed, 
whose  business  it  is  to  pick  flaws  in  the  life  and  character 
of  the  proposed  saint,  and  to  show  that  he  is  no  better 
than  other  men.  It  is  said  that  De  Launoy,  the  famous 
doctor  of  the  Sorbonne,  applied  himself  to  this  work  with 
such  a  will  and  such  earnestness  that  he  won  the  title  of 
Le  Grand  DenicTieur  des  Saints,  "  The  Great  Dislodger  of 
Saints."  Bonaventura  D'Argonne  said  of  him:  "He  was 
an  object  of  dread  to  heaven  and  to  earth.  He  has  de 
throned  more  saints  from  paradise  than  ten  popes  have 
canonized.  Everything  in  the  martyrology  stirred  his  bile. 
*  *  *  The  curate  of  St.  Eustache,  of  Paris,  said:  'When  I 
meet  the  Doctor  de  Launoy  I  bow  to  him  down  to  the  very 


THE   DUTY   OP   PKAISE.  57 

ground,  and  I  speak  to  him  only  hat  in  hand,  and  with  the 
deepest  humility;  so  afraid  am  I  of  his  depriving  me  of 
my  St.  Eustache,  who  hangs  by  a  thread.'"  It  would  be 
well  for  most  persons  to  listen  occasionally  to  a  function 
ary  of  this  kind,  did  not  one's  neighbors  so  often  volunteer 
their  services  as  to  render  his  services  unnecessary.  But 
praise  and  overpraise  are  two  different  things;  and  while 
the  latter,  when  it  does  not  disgust,  puffs  up  and  corrupts 
its  subject,  the  former,  when  justly  bestowed,  incites  to 
new  and  earnest  effort.  It  is  not  honest  commendation 
that  inflates,  but  that  which  we  bestow  insincerely,  when 
we  are  angling  for  compliments,  and  expect  to  be  repaid 
with  compound  interest.  It  has  been  truly  said  that  the 
delicacy  of  the  sensitiveness  to  merited  praise  may  be  al 
most  regarded  as  an  exact  measure  of  the  delicacy  of  the 
civilization,  and  stands  in  the  same  relation  to  the  narrow, 
blunt,  embryonic  sense  of  the  savage  as  the  skin  of  the 
race-horse  to  the  hide  of  the  rhinoceros.  The  civilized 
nature  is  sensitive  all  over.  The  whole  surface  of  the 
epidermis,  every  little  hair,  is  electrified  by  the  mere  pres 
ence  in  the  air  of  praise  and  blame. 

The  writer  we  have  quoted  at  the  beginning  of  this 
article  says  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh  that  "  his  chief  foible 
was  indiscriminate  praise."  Better  this  than  indiscrimi 
nate  blame.  Vauvenargues,  the  French  moralist,  goes  so 
far  as  to  say  that  "  it  is  a  great  sign  of  mediocrity  always 
to  praise  moderately."  Habitually  to  withhold  commen 
dation  where  it  is  deserved  and  needed, — "to  damn  with 
faint  praise"  where  there  is  signal  merit, — to  be  always 
afraid  of  committing  one's  self  and  of  being  taken  in, — 
argues  a  narrow  head  and  a  cold  heart.  The  spirit  of 
cynicism,  of  depreciation;  the  mocking  goblin  that  sits  at 


58  THE   DUTY    OF   PKAISE. 

the  elbow  of  some  men  to  scoff  at  others,  to  chill  enthu 
siasm,  to  prick  all  the  bubbles  of  the  ideal  with  the  needle 
point,  to  tell  eloquence  that  it  is  bombast,  love  that  it  is 
refined  selfishness,  and  devotion  that  it  is  cant,  is  a  spirit 
not  of  heaven  or  earth,  but  of  hell.  On  the  other  hand, 
to  be  quick  to  recognize  merit,  even  where  least  expected, 
and  to  commend  it  in  unstinted  terms,  is  sure  proof  of  a 
large  and  magnanimous  soul. 

Moralists  in  all  ages  have  denounced  vanity,  but  we 
doubt  whether  it  deserves  all  the  hard  names  heaped  upon 
it.  A  certain  amount  of  self-esteem  seems  absolutely 
necessary  to  keep  men  alive  and  in  heart.  It  is  to  a  man 
what  the  oily  secretion  is  to  a  bird,  with  which  it  sleeks 
and  adjusts  its  ruffled  plumage.  It  has  been  justly  said 
that  if  a  man  could  hear  all  that  his  fellows  say  of  him, — 
that  he  is  stupid,  that  he  is  hen-pecked,  that  he  will  be 
bankrupt  in  a  week,  that  his  brain  is  softening,  that  he 
has  said  all  his  best  things  and  keeps  repeating  himself, — 
and  if  he  could  believe  that  all  these  pleasant  things  are 
true,  he  would  be  in  his  grave  before  the  month  was  out. 
There  are  some  men  who  need  praise  as  much  as  flowers 
need  sunshine.  You  cannot  get  the  best  work  out  of  them 
without  it.  It  is  vain  to  preach  to  them  self-reliance; 
they  need  to  be  propped  and  buttressed  by  others'  opin 
ions, —  to  be  braced  by  encouragement  and  sympathy. 
"  Praise  me,  Mr.  Pope,"  said  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller  to  the 
poet  of  Twickenham,  as  the  latter  sat  for  his  portrait; 
"you  know  I  can't  do  as  well  as  I  should  unless  you 
praise  me."  Ridiculous  as  this  request  may  seem,  who 
doubts  that  the  crooked  little  poet  got  a  better  portrait 
by  complying  with  it?  And  when  was  praise  more  effica- 


THE   DUTY   OP   PRAISE.  59 

cious,  when  did  it  yield  a  richer  harvest,  than  when  be 
stowed  on  the  sickly  poet  himself? 

Bulwer,  in  his  essay  on  "  The  Efficacy  of  Praise,1'  in 
"Caxtoniana"  observes  that  every  actor  knows  how  a  cold 
house  chills  him,  and  how  necessary  to  the  full  sustainment 
of  a  great  part  is  the  thunder  of  applause.  He  states  that 
the  elder  Kean,  when  he  was  performing  in  some  theater 
in  this  country,  came  to  the  manager  when  the  play  was 
half  over  and  said:  "I  can't  go  on  the  stage  again,  sir,  if 
the  pit  keeps  its  hands  in  its  pockets.  Such  an  audience 
would  extinguish  ^Etna"  Upon  this  the  manager  told  the 
audience  that  Mr.  Kean,  not  being  accustomed  to  the  severe 
intelligence  of  American  citizens,  mistook  their  silent  at 
tention  for  courteous  disappointment,  and  that  if  they  did 
not  applaud  Mr.  Kean  as  he  was  accustomed  to  be  ap 
plauded,  they  could  not  see  Mr.  Kean  act  as  he  was  accus 
tomed  to  act.  Of  course  the  audience  took  the  hint;  and 
as  their  fervor  rose,  so  rose  the  genius  of  the  actor,  and 
their  applause  contributed  to  the  triumphs  it  rewarded. 

Adam  Clarke  tells  us  that  when  a  boy  he  was  regarded  as 
exceedingly  dull  of  intellect.  One  day  his  father  said  to 
a  teacher  who  had  called  at  his  house:  "  That  boy  is  very 
slow  at  learning;  I  fear  you  will  not  be  able  to  do  much 
with  him."  "  My  heart  sank,"  says  Dr.  Clarke.  "  I  would 
have  given  the  world  to  have  been  as  some  of  the  boys 
around  me.  The  man  spoke  with  kindness,  gave  me  some 
directions,  and  laying  his  hand  upon  my  head,  observed: 
'  This  lad  will  make  a  good  scholar  yet.'  I  felt  his  kindness; 
it  raised  my  spirit;  the  possibility  of  being  able  to  learn 
was  in  this  moment,  and  for  the  first  time,  impressed  upon 
my  mind;  a  ray  of  hope  sprang  up  within  me;  in  that  hope 
I  lived  and  labored;  it  seemed  to  create  power;  my  lessons 


60  THE   DUTY   OF   PRAISE. 

were  all  committed  to  memory  with  ease,  and  I  could  have 
doubled  the  effort  had  it  been  required."  From  that  mo 
ment  Adam  never  looked  back,  and  never  loitered.  The  boy 
who  had  shown  so  little  love  for  his  books  became  passion 
ately  fond  of  them;  he  bounded  over  the  fields  of  learning 
with  the  speed  of  a  race-horse,  and  never  abated  his  activity 
till  the  day  of  his  death. 


PERIODICAL  LITERATURE. 


MR.  LECKY,  in  his  European  Morals,  calls  attention 
to  a  "  momentous  intellectual  revolution  "  which  is 
taking  place  in  England,  and,  he  might  have  added,  in  this 
country.  He  points  out  that  the  work  of  instructing  the 
public,  which  used  to  belong  to  book-makers,  has  been  al 
most  wholly  handed  over  to  the  journalists  who  give  us  the 
results  of  their  thinking  in  the  daily  and  weekly  press. 
Even  touching  abstruse  subjects,  such  as  philosophical  and 
ethical  theories,  he  maintains  that  the  weekly  English  pa 
pers  exercise  a  greater  influence  than  any  other  productions 
of  the  day  in  "  forming  the  ways  of  thinking  of  ordinary 
educated  Englishmen/1  These  statements  may  startle  the 
thoughtful  reader,  and  strike  him,  at  first,  as  overcharged; 
but  who  that  considers  the  number,  variety,  and  ever-in 
creasing  ability  of  these  periodicals,  can  doubt  it?  The  pub 
lic  journal,  at  once  the  echo  and  the  prompter  of  the  public 
mind,  is  constantly  enlarging  its  power  and  widening  its 
scope.  As  a  means  of  swaying  the  minds  of  men,  which  is 
the  essence  of  power;  as  an  instrument  for  elevating  society, 
which  is  the  object  of  goodness;  in  the  directness,  strength, 
and  persistence  of  its  influence,  it  has  no  equal  among  all 
the  agencies  of  human  utterance.  Not  only  is  it  becoming 
the  common  people's  encyclopaedia, —  its  school,  lyceum,  and 
college, —  but  the  educated  classes  are  looking  to  it  more 
and  more  as  their  oracle.  Is  this  a  fact  to  be  deprecated, 

61 


62  PERIODICAL  LITEEATUEE. 

or  shall  we  rejoice  at  a  revolution  which  it  is  evidently  not 
in  our  power  to  stop? 

There  is  a  class  of  persons  who  talk  in  a  very  melan 
choly  strain  about  the  "  light  literature  "  with  which  they 
say  we  are  deluged  in  these  days.  Some  of  them  have  even 
gone  so  far  as  to  doubt  whether  newspapers  are  not,  in  one 
way,  nuisances,  and  whether  the  habit  of  reading  them 
daily  at  all  hours  is  not  a  kind  of  intellectual  dram-drink 
ing,  ultimately  very  injurious  to  intellectual  digestion. 
These  persons  hardly  know  which  to  regard  as  the  more 
deplorable,  that  the  American  people  should  read  so  many 
newspapers  and  magazines,  or  that  scholars  should  waste  so 
much  of  their  time  in  contributing  to  these  ephemeral  publi 
cations.  Under  their  baleful  influence  we  are  losing,  it  is 
feared,  all  terseness,  elegance,  and  idiomatic  purity  of  style, 
and  all  capacity  for  serious  thought.  Skimming  the  surface 
of  things,  acquiring  no  solid,  thorough  information,  we  shall 
be  speedily,  in  Dr.  Johnson's  phrase,  like  the  inhabitants  of 
a  besieged  town, — we  shall  have  "  a  mouthful  of  every  kind 
of  knowledge,  and  a  bellyful  of  none."  But  what  do  these 
croakers  mean  by  light  literature?  Is  not  the  word  purely 
relative?  May  not  reading  which  is  light  as  chaff  to  one 
man  be  as  weighty  as  grain  to  another?  The  question  with 
the  great  majority  of  men  is  not  whether  they  shall  read 
newspapers  and  magazines,  or  solid,  thoughtful  books,  but 
whether  they  shall  read  the  former  or  nothing.  Henry  of 
Navarre  longed  for  the  time-  when  every  Frenchman  should 
have  a  hen  in  his  pot.  That  he  deemed  a  better  sign  of  a 
people's  prosperity  than  occasional  big  feasts  in  the  castles 
of  the  great.  The  newspapers  and  magazines  bring  liter 
ature  into  every  home,  just  as  an  aqueduct  and  pipe  bring 
the  water  of  Lake  Michigan  into  the  homes  of  the  citizens 


PERIODICAL   LITERATURE.  63 

of  Chicago.  It  is  quite  true  that  the  water  tastes  occasion 
ally  of  iron,  and  wears  a  rusty  stain, —  quite  true  that  a 
purer  draught  may  be  found  at  some  lake  in  the  shadow  of 
the  hills;  but  the  water  is  flowing  in  every  house,  which  is 
the  great  desideratum ;  and,  moreover,  it  is  often  as  pure  in 
the  basin  of  the  citizen  as  beneath  the  trembling  sedges 
which  the  wild  duck  loves. 

It  was  with  the  greatest  reluctance,  and  only  because 
they  had  been  republished  in  America,  and  thence  smug 
gled  into  England,  that  Macaulay  consented  to  the  repub- 
lication  of  his  "  ephemeral "  essays  in  book-form  by  the 
Longmans;  yet  upward  of  a  hundred  and  twenty  thou 
sand  copies  had  been  sold  five  or  six  years  ago,  by  a 
single  publisher,  in  Great  Britain  alone.  Can  any  one 
doubt  that  the  reading  world  has  been  as  much  profited 
by  his  contributions  to  the  Edinburgh  Review  as  by  his 
more  ambitious  history? 

The  truth  is,  the  "  light  reading "  so  much  stigmatized 
is  a  necessary  prerequisite  to  a  taste  for  something  more 
substantial.  As  a  horse  cannot  live  upon  oats  without 
hay,  so  the  popular  mind  cannot  digest  its  nutriment  if 
it  is  too  concentrated.  There  must  be  bulk  as  well  as 
nutriment.  Destroy  our  periodicals,  and  who  believes  that 
Bacon  and  Milton  would  have  one  reader  a  century  hence 
where  they  now  have  a  hundred?  To  thousands  and  tens 
of  thousands  the  newspaper  is  an  academy,  in  which  they 
are  prepared  to  profit  by  the  instruction  they  will  after 
ward  get  in  the  university  of  which  Bacon,  Newton,  Locke, 
Mill, —  all  the  world's  great  thinkers, —  are  professors. 

We  deny,  however,  the  propriety  of  the  term  "light" 
when  applied  in  so  sweeping  a  manner  to  the  newspaper 
literature  of  the  day.  Is  thought  more  weighty  because 


64  PERIODICAL   LITERATURE. 

it  is  printed  in  a  book  and  bound  in  cloth  or  leather, 
instead  of  in  a  daily  or  weekly  journal?  Those  who  call 
our  newspaper  literature  "  light "  forget  the  enormous 
stride  which  journalism  has  made  within  the  last  forty 
years.  Our  leading  newspapers  are  no  longer  filled  with 
news  exclusively, —  with  raw-head  and  bloody-bones  stories, 
or  with  gossip  and  twaddling  criticism, —  but  with  ably- 
written  editorials  and  contributions,  containing  the  results 
of  much  thought  and  research,  touching  the  gravest  ques 
tions  of  the  day,  political,  moral,  social,  literary,  and  sci 
entific.  Often,  too,  our  great  journals  contain  eloquent 
and  instructive  sermons,  into  which  leading  American 
divines  have  put  their  best  thought;  often  they  contain 
elaborate  and  scholarly  articles  from  the  reviews,  and 
choice  extracts, —  the  crime  de  la  crime,  the  wheat  thrice 
winnowed, —  of  the  ablest  works  of  the  day  on  art,  litera 
ture,  theology,  finance,  and  science  in  all  its  forms;  and 
the  profoundest  thinkers  and  the  ripest  scholars  often  make 
the  daily  and  the  weekly  press  the  vehicle  of  instruction 
to  the  world.  Many  of  the  best  books  now  published  are 
reprints  of  articles  contributed  by  the  Spencers,  Marti- 
neaus,  Agassizes,  Herschels,  Huxleys,  Hawthornes,  Arnolds, 
Carlyles,  Kenans,  Sainte-Beuves,  and  hundreds  of  other 
writers  equally  brilliant,  learned,  or  profound,  to  the  news 
papers,  magazines,  and  quarterlies  of  the  day.  The  news 
paper  is,  in  fact,  the  people's  book, — the  only  book  which 
thousands  feel  able  or  willing  to  buy,  or  think  they  have 
time  to  read;  and  if  by  buying  it  they  can  be  cheated  into 
devouring  entire  books  in  slices,  or  even  the  juicy  and  most 
nutritious  portions  only,  shall  we  not  rejoice?  Is  it  neces 
sary,  in  order  that  a  man  may  be  nourished  and  strength 
ened  by  roast-beef,  that  he  should  eat  from  a  whole  joint? 


PERIODICAL   LITERATURE.  65 

Shall  we  be  told  for  the  thousandth  time  that  "a  little 
learning  is  a  dangerous  thing,1' — that  the  smattering  of 
knowledge  one  gets  of  difficult  and  complex  subjects  from 
newspapers  is  worse  than  ignorance?  Pray  tell  us,  Mr. 
Wise  Man,  how  many  persons  there  are  in  the  community, 
even  among  the  educated,  who  have  a  really, —  not  a  rela 
tively, —  profound  knowledge  of  any  subject?  How  many 
philosophers,  who  have  exhausted  all  that  is  to  be  learned 
in  any  department  of  knowledge?  Again,  if  a  little  knowl 
edge  is  to  be  shunned  as  dangerous,  how  is  one  ever  to 
acquire  a  great  deal?  It  seems  to  us  that  if  a  little  knowl 
edge  is  dangerous,  no  knowledge  is  more  dangerous  still. 
A  little  chemistry  will  teach  a  farmer  whether  his  soil  needs 
animal  or  mineral  dressing.  A  little  geology  will  keep  a 
man  from  digging  hundreds  of  feet  for  coal,  in  formations 
where  it  cannot  be  found.  A  little  mineralogy  will  prevent 
him  from  mistaking  mica  for  gold.  A  little  knowledge  of 
poisons  and  their  antidotes  may  save  his  life.  It  is  well 
enough  to  know  the  multiplication-table,  though  you  should 
never  scale  the  dizzy  heights  of  mathematics,  where  La 
Place  and  Newton  dwell  like  stars  apart. 

Wendell  Phillips  once  said  that  there  are  two  kinds  of 
education ;  that  there  is  the  education  of  Harvard  and  Yale, 
and  there  is  the  education  of  the  New  York  Tribune  and 
the  New  York  Post ;  and  the  latter  kind  is  quite  as  valuable 
as  the  former.  The  rudimental  discipline  of  school  is,  of 
course,  indispensable,  and  the  broader  culture  and  severer 
training  of  the  college  are  of  high  advantage  to  the  young; 
but  who  can  doubt  that  the  stimulus  furnished  to  their 
minds  by  the  newspaper, —  its  pungent,  suggestive  para 
graphs, —  its  fiery  or  thoughtful  leaders, —  the  libraries  of 
information  it  contains, —  its  faithful  pictures  of  the  great 


66  PEKIODICAL   LITEEATURE. 

world,  "its  fluctuations  and  its  vast  concerns," — its  prompt 
sympathy  with  the  ideas  and  sentiments  of  to-day, —  all 
combine  to  render  it  as  an  educator  more  effective  and  more 
enduring  in  its  effects,  for  good  or  ill,  than  any  other 
human  agency?  To  live  in  a  village  was  once  to  be  shut 
up  and  contracted;  but  now  a  man  may  be  a  hermit,  and 
yet  a  cosmopolite.  For  the  newspaper  is  a  telescope,  by 
which  he  brings  near  the  most  distant  things;  a  microscope, 
by  which  he  leisurely  examines  the  most  minute;  an  ear- 
trumpet,  by  which  he  collects  and  brings  within  his  hearing 
all  that  is  done  and  said  all  over  the  earth;  a  museum,  full 
of  curiosities;  a  library,  containing  the  quintessence  of 
many  books;  a  picture-gallery,  full  of  living  scenes  from 
real  life,  drawn  not  on  canvas,  but  on  paper  with  printer's 
ink. 

It  is  not  strange,  perhaps,  that  the  cultivated  man,  who 
sees  so  many  sterling  books  reposing  neglected  on  his 
shelves,  because  he  cannot  find  time  to  read  them,  should 
sometimes  resolve  with  Thoreau  to  throw  aside  the  Times 
and  to  read  the  Eternities.  But  what  would  be  the  result, 
if  his  resolution  were  put  in  force?  Let  the  experiment  of 
Auguste  Comte  answer.  We  are  told  that  at  one  time  this 
great  thinker  abstained  from  newspapers  as  a  teetotaller 
abstains  from  spirituous  liquors.  By  so  doing  he  preserved 
intact  his  power  of  abstraction, —  of  dealing  with  intellect 
ual  conceptions  as  with  material  things, — which  newspaper 
reading  might  have  impaired;  but,  by  thus  isolating  him 
self  from  the  interests  and  ways  of  thinking  of  ordinary 
men,  he  arrived  at  "a  peculiar  kind  of  intellectual  deca 
dence,"  from  which  a  thoughtful  writer  thinks  the  rough 
common  sense  of  the  newspapers  would  have  preserved 


PERIODICAL   LITERATURE.  67 

him.*  It  looks  like  a  very  wise  plan  to  transfer  the  three 
hundred  hours  a  year  spent  over  the  newspaper  to  the 
English  classics.  But  would  the  gain  balance  the  loss?  It 
was  very  well  for  an  Englishman  of  Queen  Anne's  time  to 
read  Addison  and  Steele's  Spectator;  but  the  Englishman 
of  to-day,  who  would  keep  abreast  with  the  times  in  which 
he  lives,  must  read  the  Spectators,  Timeses,  and  Saturday 
Reviews  of  the  present  hour.  Newspapers  are,  in  truth, 
contemporary  history;  not  always  accurate,  but  none  the 
less  history.  They  are  the  glass  and  mirror  of  the  age. 
As  the  author  of  "The  Intellectual  Life"  observes:  "The 
mind  is  like  a  merchant's  ledger;  it  requires  to  be  contin 
ually  posted  up  to  the  latest  date.  Even  the  last  telegram 
may  have  upset  some  venerable  theory  that  has  been  re 
ceived  as  infallible  for  ages." 

As  to  the  regret  that  scholars  and  scientists  "  waste 
their  time "  in  contributing  to  periodicals,  we  do  not  see 
"the  waste."  When  persons  cry  out  against  such  men 
frittering  away  their  brains  in  the  production  of  a  liter 
ature  which  to-day  is,  and  to-morrow  is  cast  into  the 
waste-paper  basket,  they  forget  the  facts  we  have  just 
stated,  and,  above  all,  that,  as  periodical  literature  is  that 
which  reaches  the  greatest  number  of  minds,  its  worth 
is  exactly  proportioned  to  the  number  of  able  and  well- 
instructed  men  who  contribute  to  produce  it.  Journal 
ism,  which  reaches  the  million,  is  the  very  last  kind  of 
literary  production  that  should  be  abandoned  to  feeble, 
shallow  thinkers  and  vulgar  writers  who  lack  capacity  for 
more  enduring  work.  It  should  be  the  work  of  minds  of 
the  largest  size  and  of  "  the  divinest  mettle."  Who  can 
estimate  the  good  to  the  community  when  the  leading 

*  P.  G.  Hammerton,  in  "The  Intellectual  Life.'1 


68  PERIODICAL  LITERATURE. 

thinkers,  instead  of  lecturing  a  dozen  times  a  year  to 
audiences  of  five  hundred,  or  publishing  books  to  be  read 
by  a  few  thousands,  pour  out  their  treasures  through  the 
daily  or  weekly  press  to  a  hundred  thousand  readers? 
Why  should  the  feeblest  men  control  the  tremendous  power 
of  the  press?  Why  should  the  elephant  be  harnessed  to 
the  go-cart,  and  the  mouse  to  the  load  of  hay? 

Those  persons  who  complain  when  a  savant  or  scholar, 
instead  of  concentrating  his  energies  upon  some  single  task, 
and  devoting  a  life-time  to  it,  writes  upon  various  topics 
for  the  press,  assume  that  the  former  course  would  be 
better  for  himself  and  the  world.  They  forget  that,  in 
stead  of  having  one  pet  notion  which  he  would  like  to 
ventilate,  he  may  have  a  dozen,  or  a  hundred, —  perhaps 
a  new  one  daily  or  weekly.  Perhaps  not  one  of  these 
notions  is  worth  expanding  into  a  book,  yet  they  may  all 
be  admirable  themes  for  a  newspaper  article.  Journalism 
enables  a  writer  to  say  just  what  the  subject  exacts  and 
no  more,  to  say  it  when  the  inspiration  moves  him,  and 
to  say  it  to  just  those  persons  to  whom  he  wants  to  say 
it.  Again,  the  persons  who  would  have  a  man  write  books 
instead  of  newspaper  articles  take  for  granted  that  a 
writer's  largest  work, —  that  which  has  cost  him  the  long 
est  and  severest  toil, —  is  necessarily  the  best.  Literary 
history  teems  with  instances  to  the  contrary.  Leisure 
and  years  of  devotion  to  a  task  have  often  resulted  in 
tediousness.  The  Fairy  Queen  and  Hudibras  would  have 
far  more  readers  if  they  were  each  squeezed  into  a  single 
book.  Who  reads  Wordsworth's  Excursion,  or  Landor's 
Gebir?  How  few  Americans  have  toiled  through  the  long 
poems  of  Dryden;  yet  what  school-boy  is  not  familiar  with 
the  Ode  on  St.  Cecilia's  day?  Of  Voltaire's  hundred  vol- 


PERIODICAL   LITERATURE.  69 

umes,  how  many  are  known  to-day  even  by  their  titles? 
Voluminous,  long-winded  authors  seldom  float  securely 
down  the  stream  of  time.  Posterity  examines  unwieldy 
luggage  with  a  severe  and  jealous  eye,  and  seems  glad  of 
an  excuse  to  toss  it  into  the  waves  of  Lethe.  There  may 
be  more  wealth  in  a  lady's  jewel-box  than  in  a  merchant's 
warehouse,  and  Gray's  Elegy,  Coleridge's  Ancient  Mariner, 
and  Milton's  LT Allegro  and  II  Penseroso  will  be  read  long 
after  their  more  elaborate  poems  are  forgotten.  There 
can  be  no  greater  mistake  than  to  estimate  the  value  of 
literary  productions  by  their  size.  A  terse  newspaper 
paragraph  is  often  quoted  from  Eastport  to  San  Francisco, 
and  stirs  the  hearts  of  millions.  In  a  few  piquant  sen 
tences,  a  writer  may  hit  off  a  folly  of  the  day,  satirize  a 
social  evil,  rebuke  a  vice,  or  put  into  a  portable  form  an 
argument  for  or  against  a  political  or  economic  policy.  In 
that  brief  space  may  be  packed  a  tremendous  power  of 
thought  and  expression,  as  in  a  drop  of  water  there  is 
condensed  electricity  enough  to  kill  an  elephant.  Above 
all,  we  are  not  to  infer  that  a  newspaper  article  is  not 
weighty  or  instructive  because  it  is  lively  and  sparkling 
in  style.  Lead  is  not  priceless  because  it  is  weighty,  nor 
is  a  bar  of  gold  valueless  because  it  glitters.  The  public 
wants  a  light  literature;  but  it  requires  a  lightness  with 
a  value  in  it,  like  that  of  the  paper-boat  which  Shelley 
launched  upon  the  Serpentine,  which  was  made  of  a  fifty- 
pound  Bank  of  England  bill. 

Finally,  it  should  never  be  forgotten  by  those  who  groan 
over  the  "  waste  "  of  talent  in  periodicals  that  many  writers 
are  born  for  just  that  kind  of  work.  In  literature,  as  in 
war,  there  are  many  men  more  brilliant  than  profound; 
who  have  more  elan  than  persistence;  who  gain  their 


70  PERIODICAL    LITERATURE. 

victories,  like  the  Zouaves,  by  a  rapid  dash;  who,  as  Byron 
said  of  himself,  are  like  the  tiger,  which,  if  it  does  not 
seize  its  prey  at  the  first  bound,  goes  back  grumbling  to 
its  cave.  All  these  do  their  best  in  periodicals.  Like 
the  orator,  whose  imagination  is  kindled  by  his  audience, 
like  the  actor  who  is  excited  by  the  crowded  house,  they 
need  the  immediate  presence  of  the  reader.  If  such  per 
sons  have  minds  full  of  thought  and  information  on  an 
immense  variety  of  topics,  and  have  something  new  and 
instructive  to  communicate  on  each  of  them,  why  should 
they  be  condemned  to  write  a  big  treatise  or  an  epic 
poem, —  especially  when  they  have  no  inspiration  to  do 
so,  and  the  task  of  a  single  work  will  preclude  them  from 
uttering  more  than  a  fraction  of  what  is  in  them,  and  of 
what  is  the  natural  outcome  of  their  genius?  There  is 
more  sentimentality  than  good  sense  in  the  regrets  of 
those  who  sigh  at  the  "fragmentary"  nature  of  a  Mack 
intosh's  or  a  Jeffrey's  productions,  because  they  have 
chosen  to  instruct  and  enlighten  the  public  through  the 
pages  of  reviews  and  magazines  rather  than  through  those 
of  a  magnum  opus.  If  a  landscape  gardener  chooses  to 
give  us  for  our  refreshment  a  grove  of  shady  elms,  we 
will  not  grumble,  but  rejoice  that  he  did  not  give  us, 
instead,  a  solitary  giant  oak.  If  an  architect  plants  in  a 
city  a  multitude  of  churches,  each  of  which  is  a  model  of 
convenience  and  an  architectural  gem,  we  will  not  de 
mand  of  him  why  he  did  not,  with  a  keener  eye  to  his 
fame,  build  a  monument  to  his  genius  in  a  single  tower 
ing  cathedral.  No  one  is  so  foolish  as  to  depreciate  the 
odes  of  Horace  because  of  their  brevity,  or  to  lament  that 
Demosthenes  spoke  on  the  topics  of  the  hour,  instead  of 
writing  a  history  like  that  of  Thucydides. 


PERIODICAL   LITERATURE.  71 

The  interests  of  society,  it  must  be  remembered,  are 
best  subserved  by  the  division  of  labor.  To  dig  the  ore 
of  knowledge  from  the  mine,  and  to  strike  the  coin  at 
the  mint,  are  wholly  different  operations,  and  he  who 
does  the  one  is  seldom  qualified  for  the  other.  If  Newton 
was  properly  employed  in  elaborating  the  "  Principia," 
Addison  was  just  as  properly  employed  in  writing  the 
Spectators.  Instead,  therefore,  of  regretting,  we  should 
exult  that  so  many  able  and  accomplished  men  have  come 
down  from  their  stilts,  popularized  science  and  philoso 
phy,  and  redeemed  journalism  from  its  degradation,  in 
stead  of  benefiting  the  few  by  writing  big  books.  By  so 
doing,  they  are  probably  doing  more,  as  Jeffrey  truly 
says,  to  direct  and  accelerate  the  rectification  of  public 
opinion  upon  all  practical  questions  than  by  any  other 
use  they  could  possibly  make  of  their  faculties.  "Their 
names,  indeed,  may  not  go  down  to  posterity  in  connec 
tion  with  any  work  of  celebrity,  and  the  greater  part  even 
of  their  contemporaries  may  be  ignorant  of  the  very  ex 
istence  of  their  benefactor.  But  the  benefits  conferred 
would  not  be  the  less  real,  nor  the  conferring  of  them 
less  delightful,  nor  the  gratitude  of  the  judicious  less 
ardent  and  sincere." 


THE  BLUES"   AND  THEIR  REMEDY. 


human  bodies  are  sic  fools, 


For  a'  their  colleges  and  their  schools, 

That  when  nae  real  ills  perplex  them, 

They  mak  enow  themsels  to  vex  them; 

An'  aye  the  less  they  have  to  sturt  them, 

In  like  proportion  less  will  hurt  them."      BURNS. 

A  MONG  the  various  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to,  one  of 
-£j-  the  direst  is  a  predisposition  to  melancholy.  What 
are  the  causes  of  this  tendency  in  certain  men  and  women 
is  often  a  puzzling  question  to  decide;  nor  has  old  Burton, 
with  all  his  acuteness  and  prodigality  of  learning,  cleared 
up  the  mysteries  of  the  subject.  Neither  body  nor  mind, 
probably,  is  exclusively  concerned  in  the  matter,  but  each 
acts  and  reacts  upon  the  other.  In  a  large  number  of 
cases  a  tendency  to  low  spirits  is  hereditary,  as  in  the 
instance  of  Dr.  Johnson,  whose  father  suffered  at  times 
from  a  mental  gloom  that  bordered  on  insanity.  Though 
in  after-life  Johnson  described  himself  and  Shenstone  at 
Pembroke  College  as  "a  nest  of  singing  birds,1'  it  is  yet 
well  known  that  in  one  of  his  college  vacations  he  was 
so  overcome  with  constant  irritation,  fretfulness,  and  de 
spair,  that  life  became  almost  insupportable.  Gaining 
strength  by  indulgence,  his  hypochondria  increased  in  in 
tensity,  till  at  last  he  was  so  languid  at  times  that  "he 
could  not  distinguish  the  hour  upon  the  town  clock."  His 
friend  Shenstone,  too,  whether  from  constitutional  or  other 

72 


"THE   BLUES"   AN^D   THEIR   EEMEDY.  73 

causes,  was  also,  in  after-life,  a  prey  to  melancholy.  Gray 
said  that  he  passed  his  days  in  hopping  round  the  Lea- 
sowes,  and  was  miserable  except  in  the  company  of  visi 
tors.  When  they  were  gone,  he  had  nothing  to  do  but 
"to  go  to  sleep  for  the  winter."  He  read  little,  and  while 
his  mental  gloom  increased  daily,  philosophy  furnished  him 
with  no  stone  to  fling  at  the  giant.  The  ennui  from  which 
he  suffered  he  has  well  described  in  the  following  lines: 

"Tedious  again  to  curse  the  drizzly  day, 

Again  to  trace  the  wintry  tract  of  snow; 
Or,  sooth'd  by  vernal  airs,  again  survey 
The  self-same  hawthorns  bud  and  cowslips  blow." 

The  poet  Gray,  though  he  laughed  at  the  sorrows  of  Shen- 
stone,  was  equally  unhappy  in  the  old  courts  of  the  Cam 
bridge  Pembroke;  but  his  melancholy  "wears  a  serener 
aspect,  and  the  shadows  that  seem  to  hang  about  him  only 
lend  a  more  mellow  and  solemn  beauty  to  his  character." 
Ruskin  declares  that  cheerfulness  is  just  as  natural  to 
the  heart  of  a  man  in  strong  health  as  color  to  his  cheek: 
and  "wherever  there  is  habitual  gloom,  there  must  be 
either  bad  air,  unwholesome  food,  improperly  severe  labor, 
or  erring  habits  of  life."  True  as  this  is  generally,  it  is 
not  so  always;  there  is  abundant  evidence  to  show  that 
a  melancholy  temperament  and  a  prevailing  gloomy  mood 
may  exist  in  company  with  perfect  health.  A  large  pre 
ponderance  of  sensibility  will  induce  inequality  of  moods, — 
periods  of  excessive  gayety  alternating  with  periods  of  ex 
cessive  melancholy.  As  genius  implies  an  excess  of  nerv 
ous  force,  and  hence  of  sensibility,  Aristotle  was  right  in 
saying"  that  all  men  of  genius  are  melancholy.  The  biog 
raphies  of  eminent  men  show  that  great  powers  of  mind 
4 


74  "THE  BLUES 

are  not  friendly  to  cheerfulness.  Poets,  philosophers,  deep- 
thinkers,  all  by  turns  have  a  touch  of  Bunyan's  experience, 
"as  if  the  sun  that  shineth  in  the  heavens  did  grudge  to 
give  light,  and  as  if  the  stones  in  the  streets  and  the  tiles 
upon  the  houses  did  bend  themselves  against  them,1' — the 
cause  being  a  lack  of  mental  balance,  for  wherever  there 
is  excess,  there  must  also  be  defect.  It  is  a  well-known 
fact  that  great  wits  have  usually  been  melancholy.  Though 
the  liveliest  of  companions,  they  have  been  habitually 
hipped  in  their  solitary  hours.  Grimaldi  was  pursued  by 
a  devouring  melancholy  whenever  he  was  off  the  stage, 
and  Curran,  who  set  the  tables  in  a  roar  by  his  merry 
talk,  was  so  sad  that  he  declared  he  never  went  to  bed 
without  wishing  that  he  might  not  rise  again.  Sydney 
Smith  was  an  exception  to  the  rule.  He  was  positively 
mad  with  spirits,  —  their  flow  was  perennial,  and  he  bub 
bled  over  with  jokes  and  merriment  alike  in  winter  and 
Summer,  on  sunny  days  and  cloudy.  Sterne  had  an  equally 
sunny  temperament.  Hair -brained,  light-hearted,  and 
sanguine, —  pleased  with  himself,  his  whims,  follies,  and 
foibles, —  he  treated  misfortune  as  a  passing  guest,  and 
even  extracted  amusement  from  it  while  it  stayed.  He 
tells  us  that  it  was  by  mirth  that  he  fenced  against  his 
physical  infirmities,  persuaded  that  every  time  a  man 
laughed  he  added  something  to  his  fragment  of  life;  and 
so  at  Paris  he  laughed  till  he  cried,  and  believed  that  his 
lungs  had  been  improved  by  the  process  as  much  as  by 
the  change  of  air.  Even  after  a  fever  which  nearly  cut 
short  his  life-long  peal  of  laughter, — "  a  scuffle  with  death, 
in  which  he  suffered  terribly," — he  was  not  depressed; 
but,  while  barely  out  of  danger,  and  still  weak  and  pros 
trate,  he  took  up  his  pen  to  announce  the  merry  contin- 


"THE  BLUES"  AND  THEIR  REMEDY.  75 

uation  of  his  Tristam  Shandy,  which  had  been  "as  good 
as  a  bishopric  to  him,"  and  so  continued  to  laugh  on  till 
pleurisy  ended  his  days. 

As  individuals  are  constitutionally  predisposed  to  melan 
choly,  so  there  is  a  national  temperament  that  predisposes 
men  to  gloomy  views  of  life.  The  Englishman,  saturated 
with  the  fogs  of  his  island,  is  notoriously  less  cheerful  than 
the  inhabitant  of  sunny  France.  It  is  said  that  when  the 
former  meets  with  reverses,  his  resources  are  his  razor 
and  his  pistol;  a  Frenchman,  on  the  other  hand,  turns  to 
that  all-consoling  word,  "  rfimporte"  and,  having  shrugged 
his  shoulders,  is  instantly  transformed  into  a  useful  work 
man.  Many  years  ago  Monsieur  Zephyre,  a  first-rate  opera 
dancer,  sunk  in  Waterloo  Bridge,  London,  £5,000,  which  he 
had  accumulated  by  laborious  instructions  in  his  profession. 
The  shares  which  he  had  bought  at  £100  soon  fell  to  £15. 
But  did  lepauvre  Zephyre  think  it  incumbent  on  him  to  leap 
into  the  Thames  to  drown  his  cares?  No;  he  used  to 
parade  the  arches  of  that  noble  structure  daily,  and,  when 
ever  he  could  get  a  soul  to  listen  to  him,  would  tell  his 
story,  winding  it  up  with  the  oft- repeated  clause:  "Though 
the  speculation  was  a  bad  one,  yet  it  must  be  confessed  that 
the  bridge  is  perfect." 

There  is  no  doubt  that  climate,  and  even  the  scenery 
amid  which  one  lives,  have  much  to  do  with  depression  of 
the  spirits,  especially  in  the  case  of  certain  finely  strung 
and  sensitive  natures.  It  has  been  truly  said  that  every 
locality  is  like  a  dyer's  vat,  and  that  the  residents  take  its 
color,  or  some  other  color,  from  it,  just  as  the  clothes  do 
that  the  dyer  steeps  in  stain.  The  dreadful  midland  mo 
notony  of  Warwickshire, —  its  endless  succession  of  inclosed 
fields  and  hedgerow  trees, —  became  at  last  so  repulsive  to 


76  "THE  BLUES"  AKD  THEIR  REMEDY. 

Dr.  Arnold,  that  he  panted  for  wilder  scenery  as  the  hart 
pants  for  the  water-brooks.  Robert  Hall  tells  us  that  the 
country  about  Cambridge  wrought  wofully  even  on  his 
powerful  mind;  it  depressed  him  to  the  level  of  its  own 
flatness.  As  the  landscape  there  has  no  striking  or  even 
pleasing  features,  and  is  often  overhung  with  fogs  or  ren 
dered  dreary  by  rains,  one  feels  there,  says  a  Fellow  of  one 
of  the  Colleges,  "  like  a  turkey  upon  a  plain ;  one  can't  rise 
above  it;  he  is  powerless  to  take  wing."  Does  not  this  ex 
plain  the  doleful  dumps  and  the  suicidal  feelings  men  so 
often  have  on  the  dead  levels  of  the  West, —  especially  in 
Chicago,  where  the  people  live  on  the  meeting  edges  of  two 
prairies,  one  of  land,  and  the  other  of  water? 

Whatever  the  causes  of  "  the  blues,"  there  is  no  doubt 
that,  with  a  few  exceptions,  all  men  have  their  splenetic 
hours.  There  are  times  when,  if  asked  how  we  do,  we  re 
ply  with  Neal's  Mr.  Trepid:  "A  great  deal  worse  than  I 
was,  thank'e;  'most  dead,  I'm  obliged  to  you, —  I'm  always 
worse  than  I  was,  and  I  don't  think  I  was  ever  any  better. 
I'm  going  off  some  of  these  days,  right  after  my  grand 
father,  dying  of  nothing  in  particular,  but  of  everything 
in  general.  That's  what  finishes  our  folks."  There  are 
periods  when  we  are  dissatisfied  with  ourselves  and  with 
everything  about  us,  without  being  able  to  give  a  substan 
tial  reason  for  being  so, —  when  we  can  say  with  Words 
worth: 

"  My  apprehensions  come  in  crowds ; 

I  dread  the  rustling  of  the  grass ; 

The  very  shadows  of  the  clouds 

Have  power  to  shake  me  as  I  pass ; 

I  question  things,  and  do  not  find 

One  that  answers  to  my  mind, 

And  all  the  world  appears  unkind." 


"THE    BLUES"    AND    THEIR    REMEDY.  77 

It  is  a  mortifying  reflection  that  at  such  times  the  powers 
of  reason  should  avail  less  than  those  of  matter,  and  that  a 
page  of  Seneca  cannot  raise  the  spirits  when  a  glass  of 
Madeira  will.  But  nothing  is  more  certain  than  the  utter 
worthlessness  of  most  of  the  advice  given  to  us  at  such 

times. 

"  Consolatories  writ  with  studied  argument 
Extolling  patience  as  the  truest  fortitude," 

do  not  produce  the  patience  they  extol,  because  mental  states 
that  are  not  caused  by  reasoning  cannot  by  reasoning  be 
dispelled.  Something  better  than  patience  is  needed;  bodily 
activity  must  be  roused,  high  aspirations  must  be  awak 
ened,  and  the  resiliency  of  the  heart  must  be  called  upon 
rather  than  its  passive  strength. 

Generally  speaking,  if  you  are  troubled  with  "the 
blues,"  and  cannot  tell  why,  you  may  be  certain  that  it 
springs  from  physical  weakness.  The  best  course,  then,  is 
to  try  to  strengthen  yourself, —  of  course,  by  vigorous  mus 
cular  exercise.  Instead  of  lying  on  a  sofa,  and  courting 
painful  ideas,  if  you  are  a  despairing  lover,  a  hypochon 
driac,  or  a  valetudinarian,  you  should  be  up  and  stirring 
yourself.  The  blood  of  a  melancholy  man  is  thick  arid 
slow,  creeping  sluggishly  through  his  veins,  like  muddy 
waters  in  a  canal;  the  blood  of  your  merry,  chirping  phi 
losopher  is  clear  and  quick,  brisk  as  newly  broached  cham 
pagne.  Try,  therefore,  to  set  your  blood  in  motion.  To 
effect  this,  don't  go  to  guzzling  down  brandy-smashes,  gin- 
cocktails,  or  any  of  the  other  juggling  compounds  in  which 
alcohol  is  disguised;  for  every  artificial  stimulant  will  drag 
you  down  two  degrees  for  every  one  it  lifts  you  up.  The 
devil  always  beats  us  at  barter.  Try,  rather,  what  a  smart 


78  "THE  BLUES"  AND  THEIR  REMEDY. 

walk  will  do  for  you;  set  your  pegs  in  motion  on  rough,  rocky 
ground,  or  hurry  them  up  a  steep,  cragged  hill;  build  stone 
wall;  swing  an  axe  over  a  pile  of  hickory  or  rock-maple; 
turn  a  grindstone;  dig  ditches;  practice  "ground  and  lofty 
tumbling1';  pour  water  into  sieves  with  the  Danaides,  or, 
with  Sisyphus,  "up  the  high  hill  heave  a  huge  round 
stone";  in  short,  do  anything  that  will  start  the  perspira 
tion,  and  you  will  soon  cease  to  have  your  brains  lined  with 
black,  as  Burton  expresses  it,  or  to  rise  in  the  morning,  as 
Cowper  did,  "  like  an  infernal  frog  out  of  Acheron,  covered 
with  the  ooze  and  mud  of  melancholy."  When  Dr.  John 
son  suffered  from  mental  gloom,  he  saw  plainly  that,  in 
stead  of  yielding,  as  so  many  do,  to  the  indolence  which 
naturally  creeps  over  a  morbid  temperament,  he  must 
overcome  his  enemy  by  persistent  physical  exercise.  He 
sought  the  society  of  the  cheerful  and  the  gay;  he  walked 
much  in  the  open  air,  and  strengthened  his  nervous  system 
by  daily  friction,  a  spare  diet,  and  frequent  change  of  occu 
pation;  he  engaged,  too,  in  merry  and  mirth-provoking 
conversation,  even  "when  his  heart  was  ready  to  burst," 
as  he  said,  "with  gloomy  emotions."  He  thus  subdued  the 
constitutional  melancholy,  which  was  never  wholly  eradi 
cated;  and  had  he  overcome  his  habit  of  keeping  late  hours, 
and  drinking  strong  tea  from  a  kettle  that  was  "never 
dry,"  he  might  have  mitigated  still  more  the  disease  which 
preyed  upon  him.  It  is  told  of  De  Quincey,  that,  during 
his  later  years,  he  fancied  that  he  had  a  living  hippopota 
mus,  or  some  such  horrid  creature,  in  his  stomach,  and  the 
only  remedy  he  found  for  this  and  similar  effects  of  opium, 
was  to  walk  with  all  his  might  for  ten  miles  a  day,  or,  if  it 
rained,  to  lug  a  pile  of  stones  from  one  point  to  another. 
An  old  gentleman  of  our  acquaintance,  who  is  the  hero 


"THE   BLUES"    A^D   THEIE    REMEDY.  79 

of  a  hundred  fights  with  "  the  blues,11  tells  us  that  he  early 
learned  a  secret  which  has  been  of  infinite  value  to  him, 
and  that  is,  that  they  never  ride  on  horseback.  Equally 
true  is  it  that  they  never  take  a  smart  walk,  never  visit 
a  gymnasium  and  lift  a  thousand  pounds, —  never  play  at 
cricket  or  football, —  never  go  skating  or  hunting, —  never 
split  their  sides  over  the  pages  of  Cervantes,  Moliere,  or 
Tom  Hood.  They  may  saunter  along  with  you  beneath 
the  solemn  elms  or  weeping  willows,  or  through  the  quiet 
walks  of  the  graveyard;  they  will  bend  with  you  over  the 
pages  of  Byron,  Tennyson,  or  Hawthorne,  they  will  devour 
greedily  the  Night  Thoughts  of  Young,  and  be  spell-bound 
by  the  dramas  of  Webster  and  Ford;  they  will  sit  with 
you  by  twilight  in  a  lonely,  retired  chamber, 

"Where  glowing  embers  through  the  room 
Teach  light  to  counterfeit  a  gloom; 
Far  from  all  resort  of  mirth, 
Save  the  cricket  on  the  hearth"; 

but  action, — vigorous  exercise, —  society, —  earnest  resolve, 
—  the  "quips  and  cranks  and  wanton  wiles1'  of  old  Fuller, 
or  Charles  Lamb,  and  Jean  Paul, —  all  these  are  their  deadly 
foes;  and  sometimes  a  single  magic  word  from  these  authors 
dispels  them  as  the  crowing  of  the  cock  does  the  spectres  of 
the  night.  But  the  grand  panacea,  the  matchless  sanative, 
which  is  an  infallible  cure  for  the  disorder,  is  exercise,  exercise, 
exercise.  Plato  thought  so  highly  of  exercise  that  he  pro 
nounced  it  a  cure  even  for  a  wounded  conscience;  and  Phil 
lips,  in  his  poem  on  the  Spleen,  says  sententiously: 

"  Fling  hut  a  stone,  the  giant  dies." 

If  misfortune  hits  you  hard,  do  you  hit  something  else 
hard.     Above   all  things,  shun  vacant  hours.     Remember 


80  "THE  BLUES"  AND  THEIR  REMEDY. 

that  much  leisure,  though  a  pleasant  garment  to  look  at,  is 
a  very  shirt  of  Nessus  to  wear.  Who  has  forgotten  the 
mournful  confessions  of  Charles  Lamb  on  this  point?  He 
who  fretted  over  his  compulsory  monotonous  life  of  thirty- 
five  years  of  work,  defied  the  chains  of  habit,  and  pro 
claimed  that  "positively  the  best  thing  a  man  can  do  is 
nothing,  and  next  to  that,  perhaps,  good  works," — how 
wretched  he  was  when  he  had  his  wish  of  idleness  granted 
to  him!  When  a  friend  of  Southey  complained  to  him  of 
low  spirits,  the  poet  said:  "  Translate  Tristam  Shandy  into 
Hebrew,  and  you  will  be  a  happy  man."  There  is  nothing 
like  business,  pleasant  work,  a  steady  pegging  away  at  some 
useful  task,  to  brush  away  the  cobwebs  of  melancholy 
from  the  brain.  "  When  I  write  against  the  pope,"  said 
Luther,  "  I  am  not  melancholy;  for  though  I  labor  with  the 
brains  and  understanding,  then  I  write  with  joy  of  heart." 
Again  he  says:  "  When  I  am  assailed  with  tribulations,  I 
rush  out  among  the  pigs,  rather  than  remain  alone  by  my 
self.  The  human  heart  is  like  a  mill-stone  in  a  mill;  when 
you  put  wheat  under  it,  it  turns  and  grinds,  and  brings  the 
wheat  to  flour;  if  you  put  no  wheat,  it  still  grinds  on,  but 
then  it  is  itself  it  grinds  and  wears  away."  Labor  keeps 
the  spirits  bright,  while  pleasure  palls,  and  idleness  is  "  many 
gathered  miseries  in  one."  Burton,  after  filling  five  hun 
dred  folio  pages  with  disquisitions  on  melancholy,  could  find 
no  better  words  in  which  to  sum  up  his  advice  than  these: 
"BE  NOT  SOLITARY;  BE  NOT  IDLE." 

As  to  bad  weather,  don't  become  a  slave  to  it,  for  it  will 
rule  you  like  a  tyrant.  It  is  said  that  even  locomotive 
engines  are  low-spirited  in  damp  and  foggy  weather;  they 
enjoy  their  work  when  the  air  is  crisp  and  frosty,  but  have 
an  intense  dislike  to  haze  and  Scotch  mists.  But  you  are 


"THE    BLUES"    AND   THEIR   REMEDY.  81 

not  a  machine,  though  "  more  fearfully  and  wonderfully 
made."  There  is  no  man  so  pitiable  as  he  who  has  a  consti 
tution  servile  to  every  skyey  influence, —  who  is  at  the  mercy 
of  barometrical  changes  whether  he  shall  be  happy  or  mis 
erable.  It  is  but  the  rising  or  falling  of  the  mercury  that 
makes  such  a  man  as  poor  as  a  beggar  or  as  rich  as  Koths- 
child, —  as  valiant  as  Caesar,  or  as  cowardly  as  Falstaff. 
Treat  the  weather  as  Goldsmith  advises  you  to  handle  the 
nettle.  Just  so  far  as  you  are  delicate  with  it,  it  will  tor 
ment  you;  but 

"  Grasp  it  like  a  man  of  mettle, 
And  the  rogue  obeys  you  well." 

It  was  Pascal,  we  think,  who  said:  "All  my  fogs  and  fine 
days  are  in  myself." 

Whatever  may  be  your  misfortunes  or  your  trials,  do 
not  give  up  to  "the  blues";  do  not  let  despair  have  you 
on  the  hip.  Are  you  at  the  bottom  of  Fortune's  wheel? 
Then  every  change  must  be  for  the  better,  and  the  next 
whirl  may  bring  you  to  the  top.  When  a  man  is  flat  on 
his  back,  he  is  always  looking  up.  Do  you  fail  to  get 
your  deserts  in  this  world?  Then  fancy,  as  Carlyle  says, 
"that  thou  deservest  to  be  hanged  (as  it  is  most  likely), 
thou  wilt  feel  it  happiness  to  be  only  shot;  fancy  that 
thou  deservest  to  be  hanged  in  a  hair-halter,  it  will  be 
a  luxury  to  die  in  hemp."  Has  some  one  defrauded  you? 
Turn  your  loss  into  a  gain,  like  Charles  Lamb,  who  could 
say :  "  Better  that  our  family  should  have  missed  that 
legacy  which  old  Dorrell  cheated  us  out  of,  than  be  worth 
£2,000,  and  be  without  the  idea  of  that  specious  old  rogue"; 
or  do  with  your  trials  as  Goethe  did,  who,  his  mother  said, 
.whenever  he  had  a  grief  made  a  poem  on  it.  "The  best 


82  "THE  BLUES"  AKD  THEIR  REMEDY. 

way  to  lay  the  spectres  of  the  mind,"  says  Alexander  Smith, 
"  is  to  commit  them  to  paper."  Burton,  the  author  of  the 
Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  when  most  dejectjed,  used  to  go 
down  to  the  Thames  and  hear  the  bargemen  squabble.  "  I 
have  heard,"  says  Bishop  Kennett,  "that  nothing  at  last 
could  make  him  laugh  but  going  down  to  the  Bridge-foot 
at  Oxford  and  hearing  the  bargemen  scold  and  storm  and 
swear  at  one  another;  at  which  he  would  set  his  hands  to 
his  sides  and  laugh  most  profusely;  yet  in  his  chambers  so 
mute  and  mopish  that  he  was  suspected  to  be  felo  de  se." 
Are  you  afflicted  with  a  rickety  constitution,  and  do  you 
look  as  thin  as  a  lath  that  has  had  a  split  with  the  car 
penter,  and  a  fall  out  with  the  plasterer,  as  Hood  says? 
"So  much  the  better;  remember  how  the  smugglers  trim 
the  sails  of  the  lugger  to  escape  the  notice  of  the  cutter. 
Turn  your  edge  to  the  old  enemy,  and  mayhap  he  won't 
see  you!"  Or  do  as  Rufus  Choate  did;  when  his  constitu 
tion  was  all  gone,  he  lived  on  the  by-laws.  Above  all, 
keep  up  a  stout  heart,  and  you  may  still  save  the  crazy 
vessel  from  drifting  on  a  lee  shore  or  foundering  on  the 
rocks.  Don't  fancy,  because  you  have  a  stitch  in  the  side, 
that  you  are  nearly  "sewed  up";  or  because  you  have 
turned  a  little  pale  that  you  are  about  to  kick  the  bucket. 
Don't  imagine,  because  you  are  consumptive  at  your  meals, 
that  you  have  got  the  consumption;  nor  because  you  have 
contributed  a  few  times  to  public  charities,  that  you  will 
die  of  enlargement  of  the  heart.  Give  a  wide  berth  to 
sympathy  -  hunters,  especially  to  those  dyspeptic,  green- 
spectacled  gentlemen  who  bore  people  with  their  liver 
complaints,  and  give  catalogues  raisonnes  of  their  diges 
tive  reminiscences  during  the  week.  Groans,  as  well  as 


83 

laughter,  are   contagious,   and   despair   is   as   catching   as 
cutaneous  complaints. 

Finally,  be  not  "over-exquisite  to  cast  the  fashion  of 
uncertain  ills  " ;  for  despondency,  in  a  nice  case,  is  the  over 
weight  that  may  turn  the  scale,  and  make  you  kick  the 
beam.  "  It  is  madness,"  says  Jeremy  Taylor,  "  to  make 
the  present  miserable  by  fearing  it  may  be  ill  to-morrow, — 
when  your  belly  is  full  of  to-day's  dinner,  to  fear  that 
you  shall  want  the  next  day's  supper;  for  it  may  be  you 
shall  not,  and  then  to  what  purpose  was  this  day's  afflic 
tion?  .  .  .  This  day  only  is  ours;  we  are  dead  to  yester 
day,  and  we  are  not  born  to  the  morrow."  Go  often  to 
concerts,  and  hear  good  music.  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  writing 
to' his  brother,  tells  him  "to  keep  and  increase"  his  music; 
"  you  will  not  believe  what  a  want  I  find  it  in  my  melan 
choly  times."  It  was  with  his  harp  that  David  exorcised 
the  melancholy  that  haunted  the  soul  of  Saul.  Luther, 
in  his  despondency,  used  to  seize  his  flute,  and  revive  his 
spirit  with  its  strains,  saying,  "  The  devil  hates  good 
music."  Philip  the  Fifth  and  Ferdinand  his  son,  the  hypo- 
chondriacal  monarchs  of  Spain,  found  nothing  else  so 
efficacious  in  dispelling  their  incurable  melancholy  as  the 
strains  of  the  sweet  singers  and  harpists  whom  they  re 
tained  as  court  physicians.  Was  it  not  to  his  fiddlers 
three  that  the  renowned  King  Cole,  that  jolly  old  soul, 
owed  his  jollity?  —  Go  and  hear  Gough  and  his  "gape- 
seed"  story;  read  Mark  Twain  and  Bret  Harte;  and  let 
your  lungs  crow  like  chanticleer,  and  as  much  like  a 
gamecock  as  possible.  There  is  nothing  like  a  loud  ha! 
ha!  to  frighten  "  the  blues";  it  puts  the  whole  crew  of 
them  to  flight,  be  they  Prussian-blue  or  indigo,  powder- 
blue  or  ultramarine.  Its  delicious  alchemy  converts  even 


84  "THE  BLUES"  AND  THETE  REMEDY. 

a  tear  into  merriment,  and  makes  wrinkles  themselves 
expressive  of  youth  and  frolic.  No  man  ever  cut  his  throat 
with  a  broad  grin  on  his  face.  Besides  this,  a  laugh  has 
another  merit, —  there  is  no  remorse  in  it;  it  leaves  no 
sting,  except  in  the  sides,  and  that  goes  off.  Above  all, 
have  a  good  conscience-,  let  there  be  no  bugbears,  no 
frightful  fiends  in  your  rear  which  you  dare  not  turn 
and  look  upon;  and,  in  the  language  of  Bacon,  "avoid 
envy,  anger-fretting  inwards;  subtle  and  knotty  inquisi 
tions;  joys  and  exhilarations  in  excess;  sadness  not  com 
municated;  uncertain  hopes;  seek  variety  of  delights,  rather 
than  surfeit  of  them;  studies  that  fill  the  mind  with 
splendid  and  illustrious  objects,  as  histories,  fables,  con 
templations  of  nature," — and  you  will  be  able  to  stave 
off  the  foul  fiend  of  melancholy,  or,  to  exorcise  him  when 
he  has  possessed  you,  better  than  with  all  the  prescrip 
tions  of  Chrysippus  or  Grantor. 


THE  MODESTY  OF  GENIUS. 


T  I  ^HE  question  whether  genius  is  conscious  of  its  own 
-*•  powers,  is  one  which  has  often  been  discussed,  and 
upon  which  the  acutest  writers  have  held  opposite  opinions. 
In  the  affirmative  we  have  the  opinion  of  Sterling  and 
others,  while  the  negative  is  supported  by  the  elaborate 
and  powerful  arguments  of  Carlyle.  As  a  general  thing, 
self-love  is  so  natural  to  man  that  it  would  seem  the 
merest  affectation  in  him  to  pretend  to  be  superior  to  it. 
It  is,  moreover,  hardly  too  much  to  affirm  that  vanity,  with 
in  certain  limits,  is  almost  an  indispensable  quality.  A 
disposition  which,  for  all  practical  purposes,  is  hardly  dis 
tinguishable  from  vanity,  is  a  necessary  spur  to  a  youth 
who  would  do  anything  great.  Without  a  certain  amount 
of  self-confidence,  no  man  would  attempt  any  noble  or  dif 
ficult  task,  and  even  a  giant-like  intellect  would  expend 
itself  upon  the  trifles  of  a  dwarf.  In  almost  every  com 
munity  there  are  certain  persons  who  deem  it  their  mission 
to  dash  the  vanity  of  their  neighbors.  They  delight  to  "  take 
people  down,"  to  make  them  "  know  their  places,"  as  it 
is  called;  and  if  they  can  but  cheat  some  vain  man  of  his 
illusions,  and  rid  him  of  the  sense  of  superiority  which  is 
supposed  to  be  so  injurious  to  him  as  well  as  insufferable 
to  the  lookers  on, —  if  they  can  only  "  take  the  conceit  out 
of  him,"  as  the  phrase  goes, —  they  fancy  they  have  done 
both  him  and  the  public  a  real  service.  To  this  end  they 

85 


86  THE   MODESTY   OF   GENIUS. 

are  fond  of  citing  certain  well-worn  illustrations, —  such 
as  the  paper-kite,  which  soars  into  the  air  because  of  its 
lightness;  the  heavy-laden  vessels,  of  which  we  see  the  less 
the  more  richly  and  heavily  they  are  freighted;  and  the 
corn,  which  bends  downward  when  its  ears  are  well  filled, 
while  the  empty  heads  wave  high  in  the  field.  Yet  it  is 
positively  certain  that  no  human  being  is  the  better  for 
feeling  insignificant  and  merely  one  of  a  class.  Even 
though  his  struggles  to  rise  superior  to  his  fortune  may 
take  a  ridiculous  form,  he  yet  may  be  serving  both  private 
and  general  interests.  What,  indeed,  has  been  the  main 
charge  in  the  indictment  against  aristocratic  governments, 
but  that  they  permitted  the  ambition  for  distinction  only 
to  privileged  classes? 

A  great  deal  of  incense  is  burned  in  these  days  to  what 
are  called  "self-made  men";  yet  we  may  be  sure  that  no 
man  who  had  had  all  "  the  conceit  taken  out  of  him"  ever 
yet  emancipated  himself  from  "  those  twin-gaolers  of  the 
human  heart,  low  birth  and  narrow  fortune."  It  has  been 
well  said  that  no  young  man,  however  remarkable  his  talent, 
could  ever  have  been  justified,  in  cold  blood,  in  taking 
all  knowledge  to  be  his  province.  The  chances  of  a  com 
plete  failure  were  so  much  greater  than  the  chances  of  even 
modified  success,  that  a  very  exuberant  confidence  in  his 
own  powers  was  implied  in  the  undertaking.  Coleridge, 
in  speaking  of  vanity,  somewhere  says:  "The  decorous 
manners  of  this  age  attach  a  disproportionate  opprobrium 
to  this  foible."  There  is  no  reason  why  the  self-conscious 
ness  of  real  genius  should  be  offensive.  It  is  only  those 
who  "judge  all  nature  from  her  feet  of  clay,"  and  who 
would  "  pare  the  mountain  to  the  plain  to  leave  an  equal 
baseness,"  that  will  call  a  man  proud  or  vain  because  of 


THE    MODESTY    OF   GENIUS.  87 

his  honest  and  due  esteem  of  himself.  Such  "just  honoring 
of  ourselves"  is,  as  Milton  nobly  says,  "the  radical  moisture 
and  fountain-head  whence  every  laudable  and  worthy  en 
terprise  issues  forth."  The  Apostle  Paul  has,  with  his 
usual  good  sense,  given  the  very  best  advice  on  this  point: 
"  Let  no  man  think  more  highly  of  himself  than  he  ought 
to  think," — that  is,  than  his  talents  will  justify.  It  is 
only  when  a  man  exaggerates  the  merit  of  trifles,  and 
sneers  at  the  abilities  and  deeds  of  others, —  when  like  the 
fly  upon  the  chariot-wheel,  some  petty,,  insignificant  human 
insect  boasts  that  he  raises  all  the  dust  and  hubbub  of  the 
world, —  that  our  indignation  is  kindled.  We  are  not  so 
much  vexed  at  a  man's  turning  his  own  trumpeter,  as  at 
his  pitching  the  key-note  of  his  praises  too  high.  But  for 
a  man  of  really  profound  genius  to  affect  to  be  unaware 
of  the  greatness  of  his  endowments  is  the  most  offensive 
kind  of  egotism;  it  is  "the  pride  that  apes  humility." 

Some  of  the  most  gifted  men  the  world  ever  saw  have 
been  the  most  daring  of  egotists.  In  reading  the  writings 
of  Shakspeare,  Milton,  Byron,  and  Wordsworth,  one  is  not 
more  struck  with  the  matchless  beauty  of  their  creations 
than  with  the  intense  egotism  that  pervades  them,  and  the 
lofty  confidence  with  which  they  anticipate  their  immor 
tality.  It  is  often  this  very  quality  that  forms  the  prin 
cipal  charm  of  their  works.  Their  poetical  heroes,  in  the 
majority  of  cases,  are  only  personifications  of  their  own 
feelings  and  passions.  Who  can  doubt  that  such  men  have 
a  proud  consciousness  of  their  own  genius  when  they  dash 
off  some  glorious  work  at  a  sitting,  and  with  the  rapidity 
and  happiness  of  inspiration? 

The  Greek  and  Roman  poets  did  not  hesitate  to  declare 
that  they  had  reared  for  themselves  in  their  verse  "monu- 


88  THE   MODESTY   OF   GENIUS. 

ments  more  lasting  than  brass.1'  "Orna  me!"  was  Cicero's 
constant  cry,  and  he  entreats  Lucceius  to  write  a  separate 
history  of  Catiline's  conspiracy,  and  to  publish  it  quickly, 
that  the  consul  who  crushed  the  traitor  might,  while  he 
yet  lived,  taste  the  sweetness  of  his  glory.  "  I  spoke  with 
a  divine  power  in  the  Senate,"  he  writes  one  day  to  Atti- 
cus;  "there  never  was  anything  like  it."  Epicurus  wrote 
to  a  minister  of  state,  "  If  you  desire  glory,  nothing  can 
bestow  it  more  than  the  letters  I  write  to  you";  and 
Seneca  quotes  the  word  to  Lucilius,  adding:  "What  Epi 
curus  promised  to  his  friend,  that  I  promise  to  you." 
When  one  of  the  two  Guidos,  Italian  authors,  eclipsed  the 
other,  Dante  wrote: 

"Thus  has  one  Guido  from  the  other  snatched 
The  letter'd  pride;  and  he  perhaps  is  born 
Who  shall  drive  either  from  their  nest." 

Not  less  conscious  of  their  own  abilities,  and  ready  to 
avow  that  consciousness  to  the  world,  are  men  of  genius 
in  modern  times.  Shakspeare  does  not  hesitate  to  say  in 
one  of  his  sonnets: 

"  Nor  marble,  nor  the  gilded  monuments 
Of  Princes,  shall  outlive  this  powerful  rhyme"; 

and,  to  a  large  extent,  the  interest  of  his  plays  depends 
upon  the  egotism  of  his  heroes  and  heroines.  Who  does 
not  love  the  egotism  of  the  melancholy  Jacques,  who  fills 
the  forest  of  Ardenne  with  the  gloom  of  his  own  soul; 
and  in  what  but  his  proneness  to  selfish  thoughtfulness 
lies  the  charm  of  Hamlet  ?  The  most  fascinating  passages 
in  Othello  are  those  in  which  the  Moor  speaks  of  his  fiery 
love  of  battle,  of  his  personal  appearance  and  history,  and 


THE   MODESTY   OF   GENIUS.  89 

bids  farewell  to  the  pride,  pomp  and  circumstance  of  war, 
in  an  outburst  of  selfish  sorrow.  Brutus  is  sternly  egotist 
ical;  and  our  interest  in  Macbeth  reaches  its  climax  only 
after  the  murder,  when  he  reveals  to  us  the  workings  of 
his  soul,  now  driven  in  upon  itself.  The  lofty  pride  of 
Coriolanus  is  the  ruling  passion  of  his  nature;  and  it  is 
even  more  palpable  when  he  scorns  to  have  his  "  nothings 
monstered,"  than  when  he  boasts, — 

"like  an  eagle  in  a  dove-cote,  I 
Flutter'd  your  Volscians  in  Corioli." 

Milton,  whose  intense  egotism  has  been  pronounced  al 
most  as  conspicuous  as  his  genius,  evidently  believed  his 
great  epic  poem  to  be  a  work  which  the  world  "would 
not  willingly  let  die."  In  the  touching  sonnet  on  the  loss 
of  his  eyes,  he  speaks  of  the  support  which  he  derived  in 
his  affliction  from  the  proud  consciousness  of  having 

"lost  them  overplied 
In  liberty's  defense,  my  noble  task 
Of  which  all  Europe  rings  from  side  to  side." 

Frequently,  in  replying  to  an  opponent,  he  digresses  into 
an  account  of  himself,  his  education,  his  plans;  seeming 
to  say:  "Remember,  it  is  /,  John  Milton,  a  man  of  such 
and  such  antecedents,  with  such  and  such  intellectual 
powers,  who  say  this."  At  the  close  of  his  life  he  un 
questionably  believed  himself  to  be  the  greatest  writer  in 
England, —  one  whose  bare  ex-cathedra  statement  should 
have  as  much  weight  in  the  world  of  mind  as  the  decree 
of  a  magistrate  in  the  order  of  civil  life.  In  this  lofty 
self-assertion  the  great  Puritan  poet  but  followed  the  ex 
ample  of  his  predecessor,  Chaucer,  who,  shy  and  timid  as 


90  THE    MODESTY   OF   GENIUS. 

he  was  in  company,  causing  his  host  of  the  Tabard  to  say 
to  him, 

"  Thou  look'st  as  if  tliou  would'st  find  a  hare ; 
Forever  ^on  the  ground  I  see  thee  stare": 

yet  did  not  scorn  to  speak  of  himself  as  the  "  most  noble 
philosophicall  poete  in  English e,"  and  to  assert  that  "  in 
noble  sayings1'  and  many  other  excellent  qualities  of  a 
poet,  he  "  passeth  all  other  makers."  Thomas  Hobbes  was 
unquestionably  one  of  England's  greatest  thinkers,  and 
his  metaphysical,  moral  and  political  writings  are  dis 
tinguished  alike  for  their  closeness  of  logic  and  clearness 
and  purity  of  style;  yet  he  was  fully  aware  of  this,  and 
boasted  that  "  though  physics  were  a  new  science,  yet  civil 
philosophy  was  still  newer,  since  it  could  not  be  styled 
older  than  his  book  De  Give.'1'1  When  John  Dryden  was 
congratulated  on  the  brilliancy  of  his  famous  Ode  on  St. 
Cecilia's  Day, — "  You  are  right,"  he  replied,  "  a  nobler 
ode  was  never  produced,  and  never  will  be."  Alexander 
Pope's  good  opinion  of  himself  leaks  out  in  numerous 
passages  of  his  writings.  Publishing  his  Essay  on  Man 
anonymously,  he  spoke  of  it  as  a  master-piece  of  its  kind. 
He  evidently  deemed  his  critical  opinions  as  infallible  as 
the  religious  ones  of  Pope  Alexander.  Lord  Bacon  was  a 
lofty  egotist,  and  confidently  predicted  his  own  immor 
tality.  Buffon  said  that,  of  great  geniuses  of  modern  times, 
there  were  but  five, — "  Newton,  Bacon,  Leibnitz,  Montes 
quieu,  and  Buffon"  Everybody  is  familiar  with  the  daring 
avowal  of  Kepler,  which  reaches  the  sublime  of  egotism: 
"I  dare  insult  mankind  by  confessing  that  I  am  he  who 
has  turned  Science  to  advantage.  If  I  am  pardoned, 
I  shall  rejoice;  if  blamed,  I  shall  endure  it.  The  die  is 


THE   MODESTY    OF   GENIUS.  91 

cast;  I  have  written  this  book,  and  whether  it  be  read  by 
posterity  or  by  my  contemporaries,  is  of  no  consequence; 
it  may  well  wait  for  a  reader  during  one  century,  when 
God  himself  during  6,000  years  has  waited  for  an  observer 
like  myself ! " 

The  egotism  of  Julius  Scaliger  almost  staggers  belief. 
He  looked  on  himself  as  the  monarch  of  letters,  just  as 
the  ancients  regarded  the  Persian  King  as  The  King; 
and  spoke  of  other  scholars  with  profound  contempt.  He 
pronounced  Bellarmine  an  atheist,  and  Meursius  a  pedant 
and  the  son  of  a  monk;  he  sneered  at  Baronius,  compared 
Scioppius  to  an  ape,  and  affirmed  that  St.  Jerome  was  an 
ass.  Not  less  overweening  was  the  self-esteem  of  Milton's 
great  opponent,  Salmasius.  As  he  was  conversing  one 
day  in  the  royal  library  with  Gaulmin  and  Maussac,  "I 
think,"  said  Gaulmin,  "  that  we  three  can  match  our  heads 
against  all  that  there  is  learned  in  Europe.1'  To  this 
Salmasius  replied:  "Add  to  all  that  there  is  learned  in 
Europe,  yourself  and  M.  de  Maussac,  and  I  can  match  my 
single  head  against  the  whole  of  you."  A  celebrated 
French  lawyer,  Charles  Dumoulin,  if  we  may  believe  Bal 
zac,  often  wrote  at  the  top  of  his  opinions  given  upon 
consultation:  "I,  who  yield  to  no  man,  and  who  have 
from  no  man  anything  to  learn."  The  Ego  et  Rex  meus  — 
"  I  and  my  King,"  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  has  become  a 
proverb.  "When  I  am  dead,  you  will  not  easily  meet 
with  another  John  Hunter,"  said  the  great  English  an 
atomist.  The  stories  told  of  the  intense  egotism  of  Kich- 
ardson,  the  novelist,  place  him  in  the  front  rank  of  literary 
Narcissuses.  No  mother  was  ever  fonder  of  her  children 
than  he  of  the  offspring  of  his  brain.  No  visitor  was  ever 
suffered  to  leave  him  till  he  had  listened  to  some  of  his 


92  THE   MODESTY    OF   GENIUS. 

productions;  and,  once  in  a  large  company,  when  a  gentle 
man  just  from  Paris  told  him  that  he  had  seen  one  of 
his  novels  on  the  French  King's  table,  he  feigned  not  to 
hear,  because  the  rest  of  the  company  were  at  the  moment 
occupied  with  other  topics.  Waiting  some  time  for  a 
pause,  he  asked,  with  affected  carelessness,  "  What  was 
that  sir,  which  you  were  just  saying  about  the  French 
King?"  "Oh!  nothing  of  any  consequence,"  replied  his 
informant,  disgusted  with  the  trick,  and  determined  to 
mortify  his  self-conceit. 

Sir  Godfrey  Kneller,  the  painter,  as  he  lay  on  his  death 
bed,  dreamed  of  distinctions  in  heaven,  and  very  com 
placently  reported  to  his  friends  the  effect  his  name  pro 
duced  when  announced  at  the  august  portals:  "As  I 
approached,  Saint  Peter  very  civilly  asked  my  name.  I 
said  it  was  Kneller.  I  had  no  sooner  said  so  than  Saint 
Luke,  who  was  standing  just  by,  turned  toward  me  and 
said,  with  a  great  deal  of  sweetness:  'What!  the  famous 
Sir  Godfrey  Kneller,  of  England?'  'The  very  same,  sir,' 
says  I,  '  at  your  service.'  "  Hogarth  had  an  excellent 
opinion  of  the  abilities  of  Hogarth.  When  he  was  at 
work  upon  his  "  Marriage  a-la-Mode,"  he  told  Reynolds 
that  the  world  would  soon  be  gratified  "  with  such  a 
sight  as  it  never  had  seen  equalled."  Northcote,  a  brother 
painter,  while  he  could  detect  and  ridicule  this  weakness 
of  Hogarth,  was  unconscious  of  his  own  egregious  vanity. 
Being  once  asked  by  Sir  William  Knighton  what  he 
thought  of  the  Prince  Regent,  he  replied,  "  I  am  not  ac 
quainted  with  him."  "  Why,  his  Royal  Highness  says  that 
he  knows  you."  "  Know  me!  Pooh!  that's  all  his  brag!  " 

The  biography  of  Laurence  Sterne  shows  that  he  was 
one  of  those  authors  who  gloat  over  their  own  conceptions, 


THE  MODESTY  OF  GENIUS.  93 

and  who  always  think  their  latest  works  their  masterpieces. 
Burns  was  comparatively  modest;  yet,  speaking  of  his  days 
of  obscurity,  he  says:  "Pauvre  Inconnu  as  I  then  was,  I 
had  pretty  nearly  as  high  an  opinion  of  myself  and  of 
my  works  as  I  have  at  this  moment,  when  the  public  has 
decided  in  their  favor.1'  Goldsmith's  self-conceit  is  pro 
verbial.  It  "stuck  out"  in  every  look,  gesture,  and  mo 
tion.  "  He  would  never,"  said  Garrick,  "  allow  a  superior 
in  any  art,  from  writing  poetry  down  to  dancing  a  horn 
pipe."  Going  into  an  exhibition  of  puppets,  he  warmly 
exclaimed,  on  their  dexterously  tossing  a  pike:  "Pshatv!  I 
can  do  it  better  myself"-,  and  broke  his  shins  the  same 
evening  at  the  house  of  Burke,  in  trying  to  show  that  he 
could  eclipse  the  puppets  in  leaping  over  a  stick.  Oratory, 
he  said,  was  a  mere  knack,  and,  hearing  a  speech  of 
Burke  eulogized,  boasted  that  he  could  do  as  well  himself. 
Being  dared  to  the  trial,  he  mounted  a  chair  and  stuck 
fast  after  three  sentences;  yet  reiterated  his  boast,  saying 
that  on  this  occasion  he  was  "  out  of  luck."  When  Moser, 
the  Swiss,  cut  short  his  conversation  at  an  Academy  din 
ner  with  a  "Stay,  stay,  Toctor  Shonson  is  going  to  say 
something,"  Goldsmith  was  almost  beside  himself  with  jeal 
ousy  and  rage.  Lope  de  Vega  trumpeted  his  own  praises 
under  a  pseudonym;  Butler  could  harangue  with  great 
gust  on  the  merits  of  Hudibras;  and  the  inscription  under 
Boileau's  portrait,  which  gives  the  palm  to  the  French 
satirist  over  Juvenal  and  Horace,  is  known  to  have  come 
from  the  pen  of — Boileau.  Wordsworth  was  a  thorough 
egotist.  He  never  hesitated  to  express  his  contempt  of  his 
critics,  and  his  self-assurance  of  his  own  powers.  Nothing 
less  than  a  large  degree  of  such  assurance  could  have  en 
abled  him  to  bear  up  against  the  ridicule  with  which  he 


94  THE   MODESTY   OF   GENIUS. 

was  assailed  by  a  generation  brought  up  under  different 
traditions.  In  Southey's  correspondence  we  find  the  au 
thor  of  "  Thalaba  "  speaking  with  the  utmost  confidence  of 
his  poems  as  certain  to  render  his  name  immortal.  Haz- 
litt,  who  could  criticise  other  writers  so  sharply,  had  evi 
dently  a  good  opinion  of  himself.  Writing  from  Winter- 
slow,  he  says  of  his  Table-Talks:  "I  could  swear  (were 
they  not  mine)  the  thoughts  in  many  of  them  are  founded 
as  a  rock,  free  as  air,  the  tone  like  an  Italian  picture." 

It  is  well  known  that  the  hero  of  Trafalgar  and  the 
Nile  took  an  almost  childish  pleasure  in  being  stared  at, 
and  called  "  great "  and  "  glorious  "  to  his  face.  His  es 
trangement  from  his  wife  has  been  attributed  to  her  lack 
of  interest  in  his  reputation,  and  seeming  unconsciousness 
that  her  husband  was  the  idol  of  the  nation;  and  it  was 
in  part,  doubtless,  because  Lady  Hamilton  recognized  the 
fact,  and  often  spoke  of  it,  that  he  became  so  infatuated 
with  her  charms.  Bonaparte  was  an  incarnation  of  ego 
tism,  and  so  self-conscious  that  he  was  visibly  offended  when 
after  his  early  victories  a  vast  assembly  turned  their  eyes 
for  a  moment  from  him  to  look  at  a  beautiful  woman. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  William  Pinkney  was  one  of 
the  greatest  forensic  advocates  that  America  has  produced, 
and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  was  one  of  the  proudest. 
William  Wirt,  speaking  of  his  absoluteness  of  manner, 
says  :  "  Socrates  confessed  that  all  the  knowledge  he  had 
been  able  to  acquire  seemed  only  to  convince  him  that  he 
knew  nothing.  *  *  *  Pinkney  would  make  you  believe 
that  he  knew  everything." 

Need  we  allude  to  that  literary  Narcissus,  Lamartine, 
who  was  forever  attitudinizing  and  surveying  himself  in  a 
mirror;  or  to  the  enormous  vanity  of  Chateaubriand,  which, 


THE  MODESTY  OF  GENIUS.  95 

Sainte-Beuve  says,  Tunivers  englouti  n'assouvrait  pas,  and 
which  prompts  him  incessantly  to  ask:  "What  would  the 
Nineteenth  Century  have  been  without  my  writings?1'  Enor 
mous,  however,  as  is  the  egotism  of  these  men,  it  is  over 
topped  by  that  of  Victor  Hugo,  who,  when  reproached  for 
his  unhealthy  craving  for  "  effects," —  the  excess  of  tirade 
and  antithesis  in  his  dramas, —  replies:  "People  object  to 
my  love  of  antithesis;  as  if  God  were  not  more  antithetical 
than  I";  and  who  again  imperiously  demands  from  Heaven 
an  explanation  of  the  great  mystery  in  such  terms  as  these: 

"Et  niaintenant,  Seigneur,  expliquons  nous,  tons  deux!" 

John  Knox,  the  Reformer,  was  a  glorious  egotist.  In 
his  chronicle  he  speaks  of  himself  always  in  the  third  per 
son,  as  if  he  were  writing  the  biography  of  some  great 
man  whose  deeds  he  had  had  the  good  fortune  to  witness. 
John  Knox's  figure  is  ever  the  conspicuous  figure  in  John 
Knox's  book.  But  of  all  egotists,  of  ancient  or  modern 
times,  William  Cobbett  towers  the  highest  above  his  fellows. 
To  such  a  pitch  does  he  carry  his  self-praise  at  times  that 
it  seems  as  if  he  were  quizzing  his  readers,  or  rather  as 
if  it  were  a  caricature,  or  wicked  invention  of  an  enemy. 
"  I  am  your  superior,"  he  boastingly  writes  to  the  Bishop 
of  Winchester.  "I  have  ten  times  your  talent,  and  a 
thousand  times  your  industry  and  zeal."  Few  polemics 
have  held  a  more  caustic  pen,  but  his  frame  was  of  the 
Herculean  rather  than  the  Apollonian  cast;  he  thought  a 
man  could  not  be  strong  enough  unless  he  incessantly  dis 
played  his  thews.  And  yet,  in  his  bold  and  daring  self- 
praise,  there  is  something  quite  noble,  compared  with  the 
mean,  sneaking,  shuffling  tricks  of  many  other  writers  who 
would  play  the  same  game  if  they  had  the  courage.  "  There 


96  THE   MODESTY    OF   GENIUS. 

are  some  men,"  says  Coleridge,  "  who  actually  flatter  them 
selves  that  they  abhor  all  egotism,  and  never  betray  it  in 
their  writings  or  discourse.  But  watch  these  men  nar 
rowly,1'  he  adds,  "  and  in  the  greater  number  of  cases  you 
will  find  their  thoughts,  and  feelings,  and  mode  of  expres 
sion,  saturated  with  the  passion  of  contempt,  which  is  the 
concentrated  vinegar  of  egotism.'''1 

The  examples  we  have  given  abundantly  prove,  we  think, 
that  there  is  more  plausibility  than  truth  in  the  senti 
ment  that  genius  is  unconscious  of  its  powers.  No  doubt 
it  is  often  true  that,  when  a  man  of  genius  is  vain,  he  is 
vain  of  what  is  not  his  genius.  The  greatest  authors,  like 
mothers  who  have  fondled  their  rickety  bantlings  most  lov 
ingly,  have  often  been  proudest  of  the  poorest  of  their 
works.  It  is  natural  to  exaggerate  the  value  of  that 
which  has  cost  us  'much  effort  to  produce.  We  hug  and 
fondle  an  object  which  we  have  acquired  with  many  strug 
gles;  we  overprize  a  talent  which  we  have  trained  and  cul 
tivated  with  assiduous  care.  But  to  suppose  a  man  of 
extraordinary  intellectual  power  to  be  unconscious  of  the 
fact,  is  to  suppose  him  self-ignorant, —  to  know  less  of  him 
self  than  smaller  men.  As  well  might  you  suppose  a  Titan 
to  be  ignorant  of  his  giant  stature,  or  a  Hercules  not  to 
know  his  physical  strength.  The  truth  is,  an  affectation 
of  humility  in  such  a  man,  who  towers  a  head  and 
shoulders  above  his  fellows,  would  be  as  ridiculous  as  the 
struttings  of  a  dwarf.  Mock-modesty  is  even  more  dis 
gusting  than  unwarranted  self-praise,  as  it  adds  hypocrisy 
to  conceit.  "  All  great  men,"  says  Ruskin,  "  not  only  know 
their  business,  but  they  usually  know  that  they  know  it, 
and  are  not  only  right  in  their  main  opinions,  but  they 
usually  know  that  they  are  right  in  them;  only  they  don't 


THE   MODESTY   OF   GENIUS.  97 

think  much  of  themselves  on  that  account.  Arnolfo  knows 
that  he  can  build  a  good  dome  at  Florence;  Albert  Durer 
writes  calmly  to  one  who  had  found  fault  with  his  work: 
*  it  cannot  be  better  done.'  Sir  Isaac  Newton  knows  that 
he  has  worked  out  a  problem  or  two  that  would  have  puz 
zled  anybody  else  ;  only  they  do  not  expect  their  fellow- 
men  therefore  to  fall  down  and  worship  them.  They  have 
a  curious  under-sense  of  powerlessness,  feeling  that  the 
greatness  is  not  in  them  but  through  them;  that  they  could 
not  be  any  other  thing  than  God  made  them.  And  they 
see  something  divine  and  God-made  in  every  other  man  they 
meet,  and  they  are  endlessly,  foolishly,  and  incredibly  mer 
ciful." 

Archdeacon  Hare,  who  believes  that  unconsciousness  of 
its  ability  belongs  to  genius  in  its  purity,  admits  that  it 
cannot  be  preserved  undefiled  any  more  than  that  which 
belongs  to  goodness  in  its  purity.  "  There  are  numbers 
of  alarums  on  all  sides,"  he  says,  "to  rouse  our  self-con 
sciousness,  should  it  ever  lapse  or  flag,  from  our  cradle  up 
ward.  Whithersoever  we  go,  we  have  bells  on  our  toes 
to  regale  our  carnal  hearts  with  their  music,  and  bell-men 
meet  us  in  every  street  to  sound  their  chimes  in  our  ears. 
Others  tell  us  how  clever  we  are;  and  we  repeat  the  sweet 
strains  with  ceaseless  iteration,  magnifying  them  at  every 
repetition.  Hence  it  is  next  to  a  marvel  if  genius  can  ever 
preserve  any  of  that  unconsciousness  which  belongs  to  its 
essence.  *  *  *  Narcissus-like,  it  wastes  away  in  gazing  on 
its  own  sweet  image."  There  is  truth  in  this,  but  truth 
too  one-sided  to  give  us  a  just  view  of  the  case.  It  is 
doubtless  true  that  every  man's  eye  should  be  fixed  upon 
his  work  rather  than  upon  himself,  and  that  he  will  pro 
duce  the  best  results  when  he  feels  himself  movecl  by  a 
5 


98  THE   MODESTY   OF   GENIUS. 

divine  afflatus,  and  produces  his  results  unconsciously.  To 
take  a  good  aim  one  should  look  at  the  target,  instead  of 
thinking  of  his  own  skill  or  staring  at  his  rifle;  and  the 
orator  should  be  absorbed  in  his  theme  and  self-forgetful 
if  he  would  sway  the  souls  of  his  hearers.  But  he  would 
be  more  than  human  if  in  the  intervening  hours  between 
his  performances  he  did  not  think  of  his  own  merits  and 
of  the  testimonies  of  others  to  his  success. 

Again,  it  is  evident  that  self-esteem  and  vanity  produce 
upon  different  persons  effects  diametrically  opposite,  inspir 
ing  one  to  greater  efforts,  while  it  tempts  another  to  indo 
lence  and  non-exertion.  Nay,  these  qualities  may  be  at 
tended  with  opposite  results  in  the  same  person.  We  are 
told  in  the  memoir  of  Baron  Bunsen  that,  calling  one  day 
on  Thorwaldsen,  the  sculptor,  he  found  him  greatly  de 
pressed  in  spirits.  He  had  lately  finished  his  colossal  statue 
of  Christ  for  Copenhagen,  and  said  that  he  feared  his  genius 
must  have  reached  its  best,  and  be  about  to  decline,  "  for," 
said  he,  "  I  have  never  before  been  satisfied  with  any  of 
my  works;  I  am  satisfied  with  this,  and  shall  never  have 
a  great  idea  again.11  The  vanity  of  Wolfe  led  him  to  make 
a  fool  of  himself,  by  flourishing  his  sword  and  indulging 
in  silly  gasconade  and  bravado  before  Lord  Chatham;  but 
the  same  quality  inspired  him  with  that  heroic  spirit  which 
led  him,  after  a  bitter  repulse  from  the  enemy,  and  while 
convalescing  from  a  fever,  to  scale  the  heights  of  Abraham, 
defeat  Montcalm,  and  capture  the  hitherto  impregnable  for 
tress  of  Quebec.  The  vanity  of  Wordsworth,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  enabled  him  to  despise  the  sneers  of  his  re 
viewers,  and  to  work  out  the  work  of  his  life,  in  spite  of 
the  neglect  of  the  public;  but  it  led  him  too  often  to  be- 
pome  a  literary  sloven,  to  spoil  a  noble  thought  by  mean 


THE   MODESTY   OF   GENIUS.  99 

and  creeping  language,  and  to  be  so  narrow  in  his  criti 
cal  judgments,  as  to  speak  scornfully  of  poems  by  Gray 
and  Burns  which  had  stirred  men  of  the  most  exquisite 
taste  like  the  sound  of  a  trumpet.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  vanity  of  Pope  tempted  him  to  stoop  to  the  meanest 
artifices  to  catch  applause,  and  condemned  him  to  tortures 
from  the  pettiest  literary  insects  that  buzzed  about  his  path, 
but  at  the  same  time  it  enabled  him  "  to  become  within 
his  own  limits  the  most  exquisite  of  artists  in  words,  to 
increase  in  skill  as  he  increased  in  years,  and  to  coin 
phrases  for  posterity  even  out  of  the  most  trifling  ebulli 
tions  of  passing  spite." 


SENSITIVENESS  TO  CRITICISM. 


TT  has  been  often  remarked  that  public  station  is  a  sort 
-*-  of  pillory,  and  that  every  man  who  becomes  a  candi 
date  for  office  voluntarily  sets  himself  up  as  a  target,  at 
which  everybody  may  fire  off  his  bullets  of  abuse.  In  the 
moral  world,  as  in  the  physical,  elevation  is  exposure,  and 
utter  insignificance  is  a  better  coat  of  mail  against  the 
darts  of  slander  than  the  noblest  virtues  of  which  human 
nature  can  boast.  No  man,  therefore,  should  for  a  mo 
ment  think  of  going  into  public  life  unless  he  is  prepared 
to  become  "  the  best  abused  man  in  Christendom."  Never, 
until  he  can  smile  with  indifference  while  his  finest  sensi 
bilities  are  scraped  by  satirical  sandpaper  and  moral  oyster- 
shells,  should  he  regard  himself  as  qualified  for  eminent 
station.  The  Indian  calmly  sings  his  death-song  when  tor 
tured  at  the  stake  ;  but  the  politician  should  be  able  to 
fiddle  when  not  only  himself,  but  all  his  Rome,  is  burning. 
For  this  reason  we  cannot  help  .regarding  the  sensitive 
ness  to  criticism  manifested  by  our  public  men  as  one  of 
the  most  unfortunate  traits  in  their  characters.  Foreigners 
have  often  called  us  a  thin-skinned  people;  but  many  of 
our  public  men  seem  to  have  no  skin  whatever.  They  are 
"raw"  all  over,  and  the  meanest  insect  is  able  to  sting 
them  into  a  rage.  They  have  a  memory  so  sadly  tenacious 
as  never  to  allow  a  solitary  line  or  word  of  censure  that 
has  been  written  against  them  to  escape ;  and  so  over 
weening  is  their  egotism,  that  the  pettiest  newspaper  squib, 

100 


SENSITIVENESS  TO    CKITICISM.  101 

worthy  only  of  contempt,  must  be  answered  with  solemn 
comment  and  contradiction.     The  result  is,  that  not  a  few 
spend  a  good  portion  of  their  lives  in  defending  themselves 
from  newspaper  assaults.     Can  anything  be  more  foolish 
than  this?     Is  there  a  surer  sign  of  weakness,  of  the  lack 
of  all  weight  and  dignity  of  character?./,   ••     •  ••••%>«    • 

If  ever  a  man  of  respectable  character  engages  in -a 
losing  game,  it  is  when  he  suffers  himself  to  be  dragged 
into  controversy,  especially  into  a  personal  controversy, 
with  a  scurrilous  enemy.  In  every  fair  controversy  there 
is  something  like  equality  in  the  combatants,  something 
like  the  same  stake  in  the  issue.  But  in  warring  with 
an  unscrupulous  foe,  and  especially  with  the  editor  of 
an  unprincipled  newspaper,  an  honorable,  high-minded 
man  is  sure  of  being  worsted;  for  while  the  former, 
reckless  of  all  the  laws  of  honorable  hostility,  and  feeling 
not  the  least  restraint  from  delicacy,  either  of  taste  or 
feeling,  will  use  at  once  his  sword  and  poisoned  dagger, 
his  hands  and  teeth,  and  his  envenomed  breath,  and  will 
not  scruple,  upon  occasion,  to  discharge  upon  his  adver 
sary  a  shower  of  filth,  from  which  neither  courage  nor 
dexterity  can  afford  any  protection;  the  latter,  being 
not  only  unversed  in  the  slang  of  the  pot-house  and  the 
ribaldry  of  the  brothel,  but  anxious  to  assert  nothing 
that  is  not  strictly  true,  will  be  temperate  in  his  lan 
guage,  and  will  make  use  only  of  those  polished  sarcasms 
which  pass  in  decent  society,  but  whose  edge  is  too  fine 
to  pierce  the  skin  of  a  professional  blackguard.  Such  a 
controversy,  therefore,  must  necessarily  be  an  unequal 
match.  It  would  be  like  a  well-dressed  gentleman  en 
gaging  in  a  mud-throwing  combat  with  a  filthy  raga 
muffin.  The  latter,  from  his  long  experience  in  the  dirty 


102  SENSITIVENESS   TO    CKITICISM. 

game,  will  throw  a  dozen  handfuls  of  mud  to  the  former's 
one,  and  in  a  few  moments  will  beplaster  him  from  head 
to  foot;  while  the  little  which  he  can  throw,  even  if  he  is 
willing  to  ,s.o?l  .his  .hands,  will  never  be  perceived  on  his 
adversary's  already  nasty  garments.  It  was  justly  said 
ty  Miebae1'  Ar-gelo,  when  he  was  advised  to  resent  the 
insolence  of 'some  obscure  upstart,  that  "  he  who  contends 
with  the  base  loses  all."  You  cannot  scuffle  with  the  filthy, 
even  if  victorious,  without  getting  soiled. 

Everybody  who  has  been  at  school  has  noticed  that  if 
any  boy  is  peculiarly  irascible,  or  susceptible  of  irritation 
under  the  various  annoyances  and  torments  to  which 
schoolboy  life  is  exposed,  he  is  doubly  sure  of  being 
victimized, —  is  pounced  upon  and  worried  at  every  op 
portunity.  The  world,  in  this  respect,  is  a  big  school.  It 
is  a  curious  fact  that  the  mass  of  men,  either  from  in 
stinctive  malice  and  love  of  mischief,  or  from  a  fondness 
of  exercising  petty  tyranny,  take  cruel  but  exquisite  de 
light  in  teasing  the  sensitive  and  annoying  the  irritable; 
while  he  who,  careless  of  their  taunts  and  jeers,  laughs 
with  an  air  of  unconcern  at  the  shafts  which  malice  or 
envy  may  hurl  at  him,  soon  ceases  to  be  annoyed  by  them. 
A  public  man  ought  to  have  a  hide  as  tough  and  thick 
as  that  of  a  rhinoceros.  Not  till  his  epidermis  has  been 
hardened  to  such  a  degree  of  impenetrability  that  rifle- 
balls  will  be  flattened  by  it,  and  his  sensibility  has  become 
so  blunted  that  the  stab  of  a  dagger  will  be  mistaken  for 
a  mosquito-bite,  is  he  fit  for  eminent  station.  No  char 
acter  is  so  exalted  as  to  be  above  the  audacity,  none  so 
sacred  as  to  scare  the  rapaciousness,  of  those  who  are 
libellers  by  trade.  A  public  man  who  escapes  being  as 
sailed  by  censors  and  calumniators,  generally  owes  his 


SENSITIVENESS   TO   CRITICISM.  103 

safety  to  the  thickness  of  his  skull.  The  public  them 
selves  view  the  matter  in  the  same  light.  They  know  that 
in  an  orchard  a  tree  that  bears  poor  fruit  is  left  un 
molested,  while  one  that  hangs  down  with  delicious  pears 
or  apples  is  continually  pelted  with  stones.  Men  of  letters, 
being  an  irritabile  genus,  ought  particularly  to  cultivate 
an  indifference  to  the  attacks  of  the  press.  Editors  and 
critics  are  proverbially  without  bowels,  and  the  more  an 
author  winces  under  their  attacks,  the  more  pertinaciously 
will  they  apply  the  literary  lash.  The  young  litterateur, 
who  is  confident  of  his  power,  should  rush  before  the  public 
as  the  warrior  rushes  into  battle,  resolved  to  hack  and 
hew  his  way  into  eminence  and  influence ;  instead  of  whim 
pering  like  a  schoolboy  at  every  scratch,  he  should  acknowl 
edge  only  home-thrusts, —  deadly,  life-destroying  blows, — 
and  be  determined  to  conquer  or  to  die. 

There  is  but  one  way  to  get  rid  of  lampooners,  and  that 
is  to  let  them  alone;  then  their  calumnies  will  die  of  them 
selves,  or  become  perfectly  harmless.  No  one  likes  to 
waste  his  powder;  and  there  is  nothing  which  men  are 
sooner  mortified  at  spending  in  vain  than  their  abuse  and 
ridicule.  The  only  course  for  the  public  man  is,  like  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  "  to  arm  himself  with  the  triple  brass  of  in 
difference  against  all  the  roving  warfare  of  satire,  parody, 
and  sarcasm;  to  laugh,  if  the  jest  be  a  good  one,  or,  if 
otherwise,  to  let  it  hum  and  buzz  itself  to  sleep."  The 
contrary  course,  however  successful  for  a  time,  is  one  of 
which  he  will,  sooner  or  later,  bitterly  repent.  To  whim 
per,  to  chafe,  and  to  fret, —  to  show  that  you  are  keenly 
nettled  by  some  affront  or  incivility, —  what  a  new  sting 
it  gives  to  grief !  How  it  accomplishes  the  very  object  of 
your  enemy!  What  a  suicide  it  is! — for  self-murder  is  the 


104  SENSITIVENESS   TO    CRITICISM. 

only  way  by  which  moral  death  comes  to  any  man.  We 
all  know  how  much  the  author  of  the  Dunciad  suffered 
from  the  swarms  of  enemies,  most  of  them  individually 
insignificant,  and  many  of  them  personally  contemptible, 
whom  he  consigned  to  an  immortality  of  infamy  in  that 
fiercest  of  poetical  philippics.  Though  the  whole  vocabu 
lary  of  irony  is  exhausted,  and  the  poet  literally  flays  and 
dismembers  the  miserable  scribblers,  yet  it  is  evident  that 
the  satirist  suffered  more  than  his  victims,  and  that  the 
deepest  wounds  inflicted  by  the  keen  and  polished  weapon 
of  his  sarcasm  were  as  flea-bites  to  the  agonies  which 
nerved  his  own  arm  to  wield  that  weapon.  "  It  requires 
no  depth  of  philosophic  reflection,''  says  the  author  of 
Waverley,  "to  perceive  that  the  petty  warfare  of  Pope 
with  the  dunces  of  his  period  could  not  have  been  carried 
on  without  his  suffering  the  most  acute  torture,  such  as  a 
man  must  endure  from  mosquitoes,  by  whose  stings  he  suf 
fers  agony,  though  he  can  crush  them  by  myriads  in  his 
grasp."  It  was  one  of  the  weaknesses  of  the  great  Duke 
of  Marlborough  that,  beyond  all  other  men  of  his  time, 
he  was  sensitive  to  the  attacks  of  the  press.  He  com 
plained  to  Harley  and  St.  John  in  terms  of  positive  an 
guish  of  the  attacks  to  which  he  was  subject.  The  moral 
weakness  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte  was  betrayed  by  none  of 
his  acts  more  plainly  than  by  his  sensitiveness  to  news 
paper  criticism.  The  sovereign  of  a  great  empire,  he 
entered  into  a  war  of  words  with  British  journalists,  and 
lowered  his  own  dignity  by  allowing  the  world  to  see  that 
he  was  stung  by  the  criticisms  of  ephemeral  newspapers, 
whose  comments  he  might  have  safely  ignored.  "  It  was 
easy,"  says  Madame  De  Re*musat,  "for  the  English  jour 
nalists  to  find  out  how  hard  their  remarks  hit  the  First 


SENSITIVENESS   TO    CRITICISM.  105 

Consul,  and  a  little  later  the  Emperor  of  France,  and  they 
accordingly  redoubled  their  attacks.  How  many  times, 
when  we  saw  him  gloomy  and  out  of  temper,  did  Madame 
Bonaparte  tell  us  it  was  because  he  had  read  some  article 
against  himself  in  the  Courier  or  the  Sun  !  He  tried  to 
wage  a  pen-and-ink  war  with  the  English  press;  he  sub 
sidized  certain  journals  in  London,  expended  a  great  deal 
of  money,  and  deceived  no  one  either  in  France  or  in  Eng 
land." 

Those  who  are  the  victims  of  newspaper  abuse  should 
remember  that  the  licentiousness  of  the  press  is  an  evil 
which,  sooner  or  later,  cures  itself.  No  man,  as  Dr.  Bent- 
ley  used  to  say,  was  ever  written  down,  except  by  himself; 
and  we  may  add  that  no  man  ever  wrote  upon  whose  pro 
ductions  the  public  did  not  ultimately  pass  righteous  judg 
ment.  All  that  criticism  can  do  is  to  hasten  or  retard  that 
judgment;  permanently  to  change  it  is  beyond  its  power. 

Do  not,  then,  rush  into  print  when  you  are  attacked  by 
a  blackguard  writer  or  speaker,  but  pass  by  his  abuse  in 
absolute  silence.  Remember  that  it  is  your  own  thought 
only  that  can  barb  the  arrow  shot  from  another's  bow; 
that  it  is  your  own  pride  that  makes  another's  criticism 
rankle,  your  egotism  that  is  hurt  by  another's  self-asser 
tion.  We  know  that  this  is  sometimes  "a  hard  lesson." 

Some   of  the    best  men  that   have  ever  lived   have   been 

• 

stung  almost  to  death  by  criticism.  Tannahill,  the  charm 
ing  lyric  poet  of  Scotland,  chanced  to  hear  his  productions 
ridiculed,  and  never  smiled  or  held  up  his  head  afterward. 
The  light,  reckless  remarks  preyed  upon  his  sensitive  mind 
till  they  drove  him  to  suicide.  Cowper  was  almost  mad 
dened  by  some  nameless  critic's  scorn,  and  Robertson,  of 
Brighton,  was  cut  to  the  heart  by  an  article  in  a  provin- 


106  SENSITIVENESS   TO   CRITICISM. 

cial  newspaper;  "ignorant  though  it  is,"  said  he,  "it  is 
before  me  wherever  I  turn."  Not  so  with  our  great-souled 
Lincoln.  When  a  friend  wished  to  communicate  to  some 
newspaper  the  facts,  as  they  had  actually  occurred,  con 
cerning  some  matter  about  which  the  President  had  been 
outrageously  abused, — "Oh,  no,"  was  the  noble  reply,  "at 
least  not  now.  If  I  were  to  try  to  read,  much  less  an 
swer,  all  the  attacks  made  on  me,  this  shop  might  as  well 
be  closed  for  any  other  business.  I  do  the  very  best  I 
know  how, —  the  very  best  I  can;  and  I  mean  to  keep 
doing  so  until  the  end.  If  the  end  brings  me  out  all 
right,  what  is  said  against  me  won't  amount  to  anything. 
If  the  end  brings  me  out  wrong,  ten  angels  swearing  I 
was  right  would  make  no  difference."  When  Dr.  Francis 
Way  land  was  asked  for  his  opinion  touching  the  publica 
tion  of  a  reply  by  a  western  pastor  to  some  spiteful  news 
paper  attacks  upon  him,  he  said:  "Tell  him  to  take  no 
notice  of  the  attacks.  A  man's  character  will  take  care  of 
his  reputation"  Macaulay,  speaking  of  the  attacks  upon 
Dr.  Johnson  by  the  Kenricks,  Campbells,  MacNicols,  and 
Hendersons,  who  had  for  various  reasons  become  his  ene 
mies,  says  they  "did  their  best  to  annoy  him,  in  the  hope 
that  he  would  give  them  importance  by  answering  them. 
But  the  reader  will  in  vain  search  his  works  for  any  allu 
sion  to  Kenrick  or  Campbell,  to  MacNicol  or  Henderson. 
One  Scotchman,  bent  on  vindicating  the  fame  of  Scotch 
learning,  defied  him  to  the  combat  in  a  detestable  Latin 
hexameter, — 

'Maxime,  si  tu  vis,  cupio  contendere  tecum.' 

But  Johnson  took  no  notice  of  the  challenge.  He  always 
maintained  that  fame  was  a  shuttlecock  which  could  be 


SENSITIVENESS  TO   CRITICISM.  107 

kept  up  only  by  being  beaten  back  as  well  as  beaten  for 
ward,  and  which  would  soon  fall  if  there  were  only  one 
battledoor.  No  saying  was  oftener  in  his  mouth  than  that 
fine  apophthegm  of  Bentley,  that  no  man  was  ever  written 
down  but  by  himself."  No  writer  has  been  more  vehe 
mently  denounced  than  l^mile  Zola;  but  instead  of  whimper 
ing  and  whining  under  the  treatment  he  has  received,  he 
regards  it  as  a  positive  advantage.  "  The  Parisian,"  he 
says,  "  never  purchases  a  book  spontaneously,  just  from 
curiosity;  he  never  buys  a  book  until  his  ears  are  filled 
with  it,  and  it  has  become  an  event  worth  chronicling,  of 
which  you  must  be  able  to  talk  in  society.  If  it  be  spoken 
of,  no  matter  what  is  said,  its  fortune  is  made.  Criticism 
gives  life  to  everything;  it  is  only  silence  that  destroys. 
Paris  is  an  ocean;  but  an  ocean  in  which  you  are  lost  in 
the  calm,  but  saved  in  the  storm."*  It  was  Jeffrey's  assault 
on  Byron  which  first  woke  to  activity  the  powers  of  that 
great  genius.  Without  that  sharp  prick,  so  quickly  re 
sented,  Byron  might  have  dallied  in  obscurity  for  years, 
before  putting  forth  his  energies.  "  It  was  the  birth-pang 
of  the  poet.  He  carne  furious  to  life,  ready-armed  like 
Minerva,  blazing  in  sudden  light  and  deadly  power,  with 
a  quiver  full  of  poisoned  arrows,  an  unsheathed  sword 
which  cut  wherever  it  touched." 

"  If  the  critics  treat  your  first  book  ill,"  wrote  Carlyle 
to  a  new  author,  "  write  the  second  better, —  so  much 
better  as  to  shame  them."  If  your  work  does  not  vindi 
cate  itself  you  should  not  waste  a  moment  in  trying  to 
vindicate  it,  but  should  spend  your  time  in  writing  some 
thing  which  will  need  no  defense.  As  Coleridge  says: 

*  "Studies  of  Paris,"  by  Edmondo  de  Amicis. 


108  SENSITIVENESS  TO   CRITICISM. 

"  If  a  foe  have  kenn'd, 
Or,  worse  than  foe,  an  alienated  friend, 
A  rib  of  dry  rot  in  thy  ship's  stout  side, 
Think  it  God's  message,  and  in  humble  pride 
With  heart  of  oak  replace  it, —  thine  the  gains, — 
Give  him  the  rotten  timber  for  his  pains!" 

The  greatest  men  have  usually  been  the  most  heedless 
to  the  censure  of  others.  Scipio  scorned  to  reply  to  a 
charge  of  corruption,  saying,  "Hoc  die  cum  Hannibale  bene 
etfeliciter  pugnavi"  One  of  the  most  notable  qualities  of 
Lord  Macaulay  was  his  comparative  indifference  to  hostile 
criticism.  As  a  writer,  he  was  even  less  thin-skinned  than 
as  a  politician.  According  to  his  biographer,  when  he 
felt  conscious  that  he  had  done  his  very  best, — when  all 
that  lay  within  his  own  power  had  been  faithfully  and 
diligently  performed, —  he  would  not  permit  himself  to 
chafe  under  adverse  criticism,  nor  to  waste  time  and  temper 
by  engaging  in  controversies  about  his  own  works.  He 
acted  in  strict  accordance  with  Bentley's  maxim,  already 
quoted,  which  he  was  fond  of  repeating  in  print  and 
talk.  With  Johnson,  he  was  convinced,  both  from  read 
ing  and  observation,  that  the  place  of  books  in  the  pub 
lic  estimation  is  fixed,  not  by  what  is  written  about  them, 
but  by  what  is  written  in  them;  and  that  an  author 
whose  works  are  likely  to  live  is  very  unwise  if  he  stoops 
to  wrangle  with  detractors  whose  works  are  certain  to 
die.  "  I  have  never  been  able,"  says  Macaulay,  "  to  dis 
cover  that  a  man  is  at  all  the  worse  for  being  attacked. 
One  foolish  line  of  his  own  does  him  more  harm  than  the 
ablest  pamphlets  written  against  him  by  other  people.1' 

When  Catullus  wrote  a  stinging  epigram  on  Julius 
Caesar,  what  did  "the  foremost  man  of  all  the  world"  do? 


SENSITIVENESS   TO   CEITICISM.  109 

Cut  off  Catullus's  head?  No;  he  simply  invited  him  to 
supper.  So  when  a  courtier  told  Constantino  that  the 
mob  had  broken  the  head  off  his  statue  with  stones,  the 
emperor  simply  lifted  his  hands  to  his  head,  saying:  "It 
is  very  surprising,  but  I  don't  feel  hurt  in  the  least." 
Frederick  the  Great  once  saw  a  crowd  of  men  staring 
at  something  on  a  wall.  Riding  up,  he  found  that  the 
object  of  curiosity  was  a  scurrilous  placard  against  him 
self.  The  placard  had  been  posted  up  so  high  that  it  was 
not  easy  to  read  it.  Frederick  ordered  his  attendants  to 
take  it  down,  and  put  it  lower.  "  My  people  and  I,"  he 
said,  "  have  come  to  an  agreement  which  satisfies  us  both. 
They  are  to  say  what  they  please,  and  I  am  to  do  what  I 
please."  One  day  the  celebrated  D'Alembert,  who  was  a 
friend  of  the  Prussian  monarch,  and  who  had  some  notable 
weaknesses,  was  insulted  by  a  gazetteer  in  the  States  of 
Frederick.  The  philosopher  thereupon  denounced  the  libel 
ler  to  the  king,  which  drew  from  the  latter  the  following 
admirable  reply:  "I  know  that  a  Frenchman,  a  country 
man  of  yours,  daubs  regularly  two  sheets  of  paper  a  week 
at  Cleves;  I  know  that  people  buy  his  sheets,  and  that  a 
fool  always  finds  a  greater  fool  to  read  him;  but  I  find 
it  very  difficult  to  persuade  myself  that  a  writer  of  that 
temper  can  prejudice  your  reputation.  Ah,  my  good 
D'Alembert,  if  you  were  king  of  England,  you  would  en 
counter  many  other  lampoons,  with  which  your  very  faith 
ful  subjects  would  furnish  you  to  try  your  patience.  If 
you  knew  what  a  number  of  infamous  writings  your  dear 
countrymen  have  published  against  me  during  the  war, 
you  would  laugh  at  this  miserable  scribbler.  I  have  not 
deigned  to  read  all  these  works  which  are  the  offspring 
of  the  hate  and  envy  of  my  enemies,  and  I  have  recollected 


110  SENSITIVENESS   TO   CRITICISM. 

that  beautiful  ode   of    Horace :    '  The  wise  man  continues 
unmoved?  " 

When  Voltaire  complained  of  his  critics  to  Fontenelle, 
the  latter  opened  a  great  box  of  uncut  pamphlets,  and  said: 
"  Here  is  all  that  has  been  written  against  me."  He  had 
never  read  a  page  of  them.  In  the  same  spirit  Cardinal 
Mazarin  preserved  and  used  to  display,  in  forty-four  bound 
quarto  volumes,  all  the  libels  ever  written  against  him. 
It  is  said  that  when  the  elder  Kean  was  playing  in  New 
York  the  same  round  of  characters  with  the  celebrated 
Cooper,  and  was  daily  attacked  by  a  gazette  in  the  interest 
of  his  rival,  he  ordered  his  man,  Miller,  to  take  the  paper 
with  a  pair  of  tongs  and  remove  it  from  his  presence,  say 
ing  that  "he  never  read  attacks."  This  was  certainly 
wiser  than  embroiling  himself  in  a  long-winded  and  irri 
tating  controversy,  in  which  he  would  have  been  likely  to 
do  many  foolish  things,  and  to  receive  many  hard  blows, 
however  crushing  those  he  might  have  dealt  against  his 
enemies.  When  the  storm  of  abuse  was  raging  most  fierce 
ly  against  Sir  Thomas  Fowell  Buxton,  the  champion  of 
slave  emancipation,  he  was  asked  by  a  friend,  "  What  shall 
I  say  when  I  hear  people  abusing  you?"  "Say!"  he  re 
plied,  snapping  his  fingers,  "say  that.  You  good  folks 
think  too  much  of  your  good  name.  Do  right,  and  right 
will  be  done  you."  The  severest  rebuke,  oftentimes,  to  an 
enemy  is  silence;  the  most  galling  commentary,  neglect. 
"Speak!"  screamed  a  termagant  to  one  on  whom  she  had 
discharged  a  whole  vocabulary  of  oaths, —  "speak,  you 
devil,  or  I  shall  burst!" 


THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  REAL. 


THE  great  Catholic  writer,  Count  Joseph  de  Maistre, 
in  a  letter  to  a  friend  at  the  Sardinian  court,  says: 
"  You  are  kind  enough  to  caution  me  against  the  heat  of 
my  style.  I  will  only  add,  it  is  impossible  to  have  my 
style  without  having  my  defects.  Would  you  have  fire 
which  does  not  burn,  or  water  which  does  not  wet?  A 
word  more  on  a  certain  Parisian  irony  for  which  I  have 
a  turn,  which  I  may  sometimes  abuse.  When  irony  is 
exercised  upon  nothings,  it  is  a  silly  superfluity.  It  is  not 
the  same  when  it  sharpens  the  reasoning, —  when  it  makes 
a  puncture,  so  to  speak,  to  let  it  pass  through,  as  the 
needle  does  the  thread."  In  this  frank  acknowledgment 
we  have  one  of  the  thousand  illustrations  that  might  be 
cited  of  the  truth  that  there  is  no  excellence  without  some 
corresponding  drawback;  that  the  greatest  writer  or  artist 
cannot  escape  from  himself, —  cannot  avoid  the  inevitable 
fate  of  all,  which  is  to  have  the  faults  of  their  qualities. 
It  is  a  fact  well  understood  by  every  competent  art-critic, 
that  faultless  precision  of  detail  is  the  sure  mark  of 
mediocrity;  anomaly,  the  invariable  characteristic  of  the 
highest  order  of  genius  in  every  branch  of  imitative  art. 
Great  poets  and  novelists  do  not  hesitate  to  disregard  the 
strict  rules  of  narrative  probability,  especially  when  they 
are  likely  to  hurt  the  general  effect  of  a  composition. 
The  great  Italian  painters  and  sculptors  did  not  scruple, 


in 


112          THE  IDEAL  A^D  THE  REAL. 

at  times,  to  violate  truth  and  nature  where  a  rigid  ad 
herence  to  them  would  have  defeated  their  aims.  Some 
times  they  made  a  shadow  fall  on  objects  which,  on  strictly 
optical  principles,  it  would  not  have  reached;  at  other 
times,  a  figure  in  the  background  of  a  picture  was  drawn 
larger  or  smaller,  more  or  less  distinct,  than  the  strict 
rules  of  perspective  enjoin. 

Again,  not  only  do  we  find  these  anomalies  abounding 
in  the  works  of  genius,  but  we  find  that  the  greater  the 
master,  the  greater  are  his  faults.  Just  in  proportion  as 
his  strength  of  wing  enables  him  to  soar  away  from  the 
beaten  track,  the  groove  in  which  mediocrity  is  content 
to  plod,  is  he  likely  to  fall  into  mistakes  and  errors. 
Raphael's  animals  are  all  bad,  and  so  are  those  of  Da 
Vinci.  How  the  disciples  in  Raphael's  "  Miraculous 
Draught  of  Fishes"  contrived  to  preserve  their  equilib 
rium  in  the  boatlets  which  the  artist  allows  them,  has 
always  been  a  mystery  to  critics.  The  figures  of  most 
landscape  painters  are  bad,  and  even  in  the  productions 
of  the  greatest  masters, —  Claude,  Poussin,  Salvator, — 
there  is  much  carelessness  about  details  and  particular 
truths.  One  of  these  painters  draws  the  anatomy  of  a 
tree  well,  but  fails  in  clothing  it  with  leaves;  another 
paints  sunshine  admirably,  but  gives  us  woolen  clouds. 
Claude,  so  happy  in  his  general  effects,  drew  impossible 
curves  and  angles  among  his  tree  trunks.  Poussin's 
"  Deluge  "  with  boats,  and  "  Saint  Jerome  "  with  an  eight- 
day  clock  before  him,  are  well  known  to  amateurs.  One 
of  the  Dutch  artists  makes  the  river  of  Eden  a  canal,  and 
builds  Babylon  upon  piles.  Again,  in  painting,  as  in 
poetry  and  even  in  prose,  many  an  object  is  used,  not  for 
its  own  sake,  but  as  a  foil,  to  give  effect  to  something 


THE   IDEAL   AND   THE    REAL.  113 

else.  Thus  the  cows  and  oxen  which  Hart,  instead  of 
drawing  with  scrupulous  fidelity,  has  blotched  with  a  few 
broad  strokes  into  the  foreground  of  the  beautiful  autumn 
landscape  before  us,  were  put  there,  not  to  be  looked  at, 
but  to  be  looked  over,  as  the  spectator  gazes  at  the  gorgeous 
woods  beyond, —  woods  which  look  as  if  a  splendid  sunset 
had  fallen  in  fragments  upon  them,  and  set  them  all  ablaze. 
An  artist  cannot  tell  all  the  truth  and  show  everything 
in  a  picture;  he  must  concentrate  his  force,  and  therefore 
we  do  not  complain  of  the  omission  or  even  misrepresen 
tation  of  some  of  the  accessories,  if  the  capital  object  is 
portrayed  with  vividness,  beauty  and  truth.  It  is  true 
that  these  omissions  or  misrepresentations  cannot,  ab 
stractly,  be  defended;  and  so  far  a  Turner  who  gives  us 
half-finished  cows  and  donkeys,  and  a  Shakspeare  that 
makes  Bohemia  a  seaport  and  arms  the  Romans  of  Phar- 
salia  with  the  Spanish  rapier  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
must  yield  the  palm  of  superiority  to  merely  mechanical 
artists,  who  are  "  coldly  correct  and  critically  dull.1'  But 
we  must  remember  that  had  Turner  and  Shakspeare  been 
scrupulous  about  details  and  ambitious  of  microscopic  ex 
cellence,  they  would  not  have  been  Turner  and  Shakspeare, 
and  the  world  would  have  lacked  a  "  Venice "  and  a 
"  Macbeth."  Indeed,  the  great  difference  between  a  great 
artist  and  a  little  one  lies  in  their  respective  powers  of 
generalization, —  in  the  comparative  adroitness  and  skill 
with  which  they  balance  the  general  and  the  particular. 
A  great  painter  has  the  courage  to  commit  faults;  he 
neglects  or  casts  aside  many  petty  details,  that  he  may 
give  expression  to  greater  truths;  while  a  feeble  painter 
guards  every  detail,  and  prides  himself  on  the  number  of 
particulars  to  which  he  faithfully  adheres.  So  with  ora- 


114  THE   IDEAL   AND   THE   REAL. 

tory,  history,  biography  and  essays;  the  masters  in  these 
departments  of  speaking  and  writing  aim,  as  a  rule,  at  a 
general  end  or  impression,  instead  of  wasting  their  time 
upon  minutiae  or  little  effects.  They  cull,  pick,  square, 
reject,  and  amalgamate  their  materials,  so  as  to  produce 
a  certain  unity  of  effect.  In  short,  they  group  instead  of 
analyzing,  and  produce  by  a  few  master  touches  results 
which  pre-Raphaelite  minuteness  and  laborious  finish  would 
mar. 

What  can  be  more  unjust,  therefore,  than  that  petty 
criticism  so  common  in  our  journals  and  reviews,  which 
overlooks  the  main  qualities  of  a  literary  or  artistic  pro 
duction,  in  a  microscopic  examination  of  the  details?  There 
are  critics  so  constituted  that  they  are  utterly  blind  to 
the  merits  of  a  painting  or  a  poem,  if  they  detect  a  few 
faults  or  flaws,  when,  perhaps,  these  very  faults  may  serve 
as  foils  to  set  off  the  excellence  of  the  work  as  a  whole, 
and  even  the  discordance  of  details  may  contribute  to  the 
general  harmony  of  effect.  They  are  almost  ready  to 
smash  a  painted  window  in  their  anxiety  to  destroy  an 
insect  on  it,  and,  as  Whately  says,  in  looking  at  a  pea 
cock's  train,  they  would  fix  on  every  spot  where  the 
feathers  were  worn  or  the  colors  faded,  and  see  nothing 
else.  A  late  writer,  speaking  of  the  subtleties  in  which 
some  of  the  Homeric  critics  have  indulged,  justly  observes 
that  there  is  no  one  of  their  practices  more  fallacious  or 
pernicious  than  that,  lately  so  much  in  vogue,  of  picking 
petty  flaws  and  holes  in  the  mechanical  structure  of  the 
poems,  while  all  their  grander  features  of  moral  and 
poetical  harmony  are  overlooked.  "  Against  such  an  or 
deal  no  Epic  composition,  even  if  indited  by  the  pen  of 
Calliope  herself,  could  stand  for  a  moment."  A  critic  of 


THE   IDEAL   AKD   THE   REAL.  115 

this  stamp  once  went  through  several  poems  of  I^ans 
Christian  Andersen,  noticing  the  number  of  times  he  had 
used  the  word  "  beautiful,"  or  some  similar  word, — which 
at  last  led  a  little  girl,  six  years  old,  who  had  listened 
with  surprise  to  the  strictures,  to  take  up  the  book  and, 
pointing  to  the  conjunction  "and,"  observe:  "There  is 
still  a  little  word,  sir,  that  you  have  not  scolded  about." 

The  observations  we  have  made  concerning  the  products 
of  the  pen,  the  brush,  and  the  chisel,  apply  with  equal 
force  to  the  writers  and  artists  themselves, —  indeed,  to 
the  physical,  mental,  and  moral  qualities  of  every  human 
being.  It  is  a  trite  remark  that  no  woman,  however  beau 
tiful  or  lovely,  is  free  from  all  defects.  In  the  most  fault 
less  daughter  of  Eve  that  ever  dances  before  mortal  vision, 
there  is  always  some  blemish  which  forbids  her  being  de 
clared  perfect.  She  has,  perhaps,  a  lovely  face  with  an 
ungraceful  figure,  or  an  elegant  figure  with  a  plain  face; 
or  the  ear  is  too  large,  the  nose  too  small,  the  hand  or  foot 
too  big,  or  some  other  blemish  peeps  out  to  betray  her 
earthly  origin.  The  perfection  of  which  we  so  often  speak 
has,  in  fact,  no  existence;  it  is  only  an  idea  of  the  mind, 
created  by  our  fancying  a  collection  of  all  fine  features  in 
one  person.  In  painting  and  sculpture  we  have  a  realiza 
tion  of  such  an  idea  on  canvas  or  in  stone;  but  nobody  for 
a  moment  dreams  that  it  is  ever  actualized  in  nature.  In 
the  same  way,  by  piecing  together  all  the  good  moral 
qualities,  we  may  conceive  of  individuals  perfect  in  men 
tal  constitution,  or  combining  every  species  of  mental  and 
moral  excellence;  but,  like  winged  men,  mermaids,  and 
griffins,  they  are  only  fictions  of  the  brain.  We  never 
meet  with  such  persons  in  the  street  or  by  the  fireside, 
any  more  than  we  meet  with  paragons  of  female  beauty 


116  THE   IDEAL   AND   THE    KEAL. 

that  combine  in  themselves  all  possible  fine  features  with 
out  one  defect  or  blemish. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  plenty  of  such  model  men  and 
women  in  romance,  for  your  novelist  never  hesitates  to 
blend  together  the  most  incongruous  qualities  in  one  favor 
ite  character.  But  nature  is  much  more  frugal  in  her 
distribution  of  mental  endowments  than  thus  to  heap  to 
gether  all  manner  of  shining  qualities  in  one  glaring  mass. 
As  the  fleet  greyhound  has  no  scent,  and  the  peacock,  which 
delights  us  with  the  beauty  of  its  plumage,  has  a  discord 
ant  voice;  as  the  gaudy  flower  has  little  fragrance,  and 
the  hardiest  and  the  loftiest  trees  are  comparatively  bar 
ren  of  fruit,  nearly  all  productive  trees  being  ugly  little 
cripples;  so  every  son  and  daughter  of  Adam  has  certain 
desirable  mental  or  moral  qualities,  but  no  one  can  boast 
of  them  all.  "  How,"  asks  Sir  William  Temple,  in  his 
essay  on  Ancient  and  Modern  Learning,  "  can  a  man  hope 
to  excel  in  all  qualities,  when  some  are  produced  by  the 
heat,  others  by  the  coldness  of  the  brain  and  temper? 
The  abilities  of  man  must  fall  short  on  one  side  or  the 
other,  like  too  scanty  a  blanket  when  you  are  a-bed;  if 
you  pull  it  upon  your  shoulders,  you  leave  your  feet  bare; 
if  you  thrust  it  down  upon  your  feet,  your  shoulders  are 
uncovered."  Julian  Charles  Young,  who  knew  Words 
worth  and  Coleridge,  tells  us  that  the  former  used  to 
speak  regretfully  of  the  moral  flaws  in  the  letter's  char 
acter, —  his  opium-eating,  ingratitude  to  Southey,  and  neg 
lect  of  his  parental  and  conjugal  obligations;  while  Col 
eridge,  in  turn,  denounced  Wordsworth's  parsimony  in  the 
same  breath  in  which  he  vaunted  his  purity  and  piety. 
"  There  is  no  greater  monster,"  adds  Mr.  Young,  "  than 
a  faultless  man." 


THE   IDEAL   AND   THE   HEAL.  117 

As  this  arrangement  of  Providence  must  have  been 
intended  for  some  end  that  is  upon  the  whole  beneficial, 
what  can  be  more  unreasonable  than  the  complaints  we 
make  of  the  imperfections  of  our  fellow-beings?  How 
common  it  is  for  a  man  to  be  condemned  by  his  fellows 
because  he  has  not  certain  qualities  of  mind  or  heart  that 
are  diametrically  opposed  to  each  other!  One  man  has  a 
gay  temper  and  a  dazzling  wit,  and  we  wonder  that  he 
has  not  more  gravity  and  judgment;  another  has  a  mathe 
matical  turn  of  mind,  and  we  complain  of  his  lack  of 
imagination.  We  wonder,  on  the  one  hand,  that  the  act 
ive,  bustling  man  gives  so  little  time  to  reflection,  and, 
on  the  other,  that  the  thinking  man  should  have  such  a 
dislike  for  action.  It  is  thought  strange  that  the  many- 
sided  man,  who  astonishes  us  by  the  multifariousness  of 
his  knowledge,  should  be  "superficially  omniscient";  and, 
again,  that  one  who  has  great  power  of  concentration,  and 
sounds  the  depth  of  some  subjects,  should  be  so  deplorably 
ignorant  of  all  others.  The  generous,  free-hearted  man, 
whose  purse  flies  open  at  every  appeal  of  charity,  is  cen 
sured  for  his  lack  of  economy,  and  the  prudent,  saving 
man  for  his  stinginess  and  meanness.  The  honest,  con 
scientious  man,  who  has  a  stern  hatred  of  vice,  shocks  us 
by  his  roughness  and  bluntness;  while  the  polished  man 
of  the  world,  who  charms  us  by  his  courtesies  and  win 
ning  conversation,  hardly  less  displeases  us  by  the  light 
censure  with  which  he  visits  the  widest  aberrations  from 
virtue. 

The  absurdity  of  our  complaints  in  each  of  these  cases 
is  so  evident  as  hardly  to  need  comment.  We  do  not  com 
plain  of  the  truck-horse  that  it  has  not  the  fleetness  of  a 
racer,  or  of  the  race-horse  that  it  has  not  the  endurance 


118  THE   IDEAL   AND   THE   REAL. 

of  the  mule;  and  yet  we  are  often  indignant  because  a 
fellow  mortal  is  not  somebody  else,  or  does  not  exhibit 
qualities  which  are  incompatible  with  those  we  admire  in 
him.  In  youth,  especially,  are  we  liable  to  this  error. 
Enthusiastic  and  sanguine,  we  are  no  sooner  captivated 
by  any  particular  excellence  in  a  character,  than  we  im 
mediately  give  it  credit  for  all  others;  and  we  are  dis 
gusted  beyond  reason  when  we  come  to  discover,  as  dis 
cover  we  must,  the  defects  in  the  opposite  scale  of  the 
balance.  The  unreasonableness  of  our  expectations  will  be 
still  more  apparent  if  we  consider  another  obvious  fact, — 
that  even  in  the  rare  cases  where  a  man  is  endowed  by 
Providence  with  all  the  mental  and  moral  faculties  in  a 
proximately  equal  degree,  the  frequent  and  habitual  exer 
cise  of  one  set  of  them,  so  necessary  in  the  division  of 
labor  which  a  complex  civilization  necessitates,  is  almost 
sure  to  make  the  other  faculties  rust  or  weaken  from 
disuse. 

Again,  when  by  strenuous  efforts  and  unceasing  vigi 
lance  certain  virtues  have  been  attained  by  us,  how  often 
do  we  find,  in  the  very  hour  of  our  triumph,  some  oppo 
site  vice  peeping  out !  In  vain  do  we  strive,  by  suppress 
ing  every  bad  tendency,  and  stimulating  every  lagging 
virtue,  to  attain  to  an  ideal  state.  In  vain  do  we  clip 
and  stretch,  reduce  and  inflate,  each  of  our  various  en 
dowments,  so  as  to  bring  all  to  a  level  or  a  match.  The 
plague  is,  that  no  sooner  have  we  whipped  and  goaded 
some  quality  into  activity,  or  reined  another  into  repose, 
than  we  discover  that,  like  the  dog-hating  woman,  whose 
husband  delighted  her  by  telling  her  that  he  had  sold  his 
big  mastiff  for  fifty  dollars,  but  afterward  explained  that 
he  had  taken  in  payment  two  puppies  at  twenty-five  dol- 


THE   IDEAL   AND   THE   HEAL.  119 

lars  apiece,  we  have  only  exchanged  one  form  of  error 
for  another,  the  golden  mean  being  as  remote  as  ever; 
or,  if  we  have  brought  up  one  faculty  or  quality  to  par, 
another,  for  lack  of  due  attention,  is  giving  way!  As 
frost,  raised  to  its  utmost  intensity,  produces  the  sensation 
of  fire,  so  any  good  quality,  over-wrought  and  pushed  to 
excess,  turns  into  its  own  contrary.  Dam  up  vice  in  one 
place,  and  lo!  you  will  almost  immediately  find  it  oozing 
out  in  another.  After  having  acted  for  years  upon  Poor 
Richard's  maxims  of  frugality  and  prudence,  we  are  startled 
to  find  that  we  have  become  mere  worldlings  and  niggards; 
or  we  find  that  we  have  abandoned  one  form  of  indul 
gence  only  to  give  ourselves  full  license  in  another.  Let 
the  right  wing  of  your  moral  army  be  victorious,  and 
chase  all  opposed  to  it  from  the  field,  and  straightway  you 
will  find,  as  did  the  royalists  at  Marston  Moor,  that  the 
left  has  been  disgracefully  beaten,  and  has  fled  twenty 
miles  to  the  rear. 

We  sometimes  fancy,  when  we  see  a  face  in  which  there 
are  some  irregularities  of  feature,  that,  by  slightly  varying 
its  lineaments, —  by  adding  a  little  here,  and  subtracting 
there, — we  could  make  it  perfect.  But  could  the  altera 
tions  be  made,  the  result  would  probably  show  how  inferior 
to  nature's  own  work  is  the  work  of  "  nature's  journey 
men."  It  is  altogether  probable  that  the  same  secret  blend 
ing  of  excellence  and  imperfection  in  the  parts  is  as 
essential  to  the  beauty  of  the  whole  in  the  mental  and 
moral  man  as  in  the  physical.  The  very  discords  in  our 
natures,  like  those  in  music,  may  contribute  to  the  general 
harmony  of  the  effect.  As  the  lily,  the  emblem  of  purity, 
and  the  lotus-flower,  grow  out  of  the  mud, —  as  certain 
trees  shed  their  precious  gums  by  virtue  of  a  disease, 


120  THE   IDEAL   AND   THE   REAL. 

without  which  the  gums  would  be  wanting, —  as  the  pearl, 
the  ornament  of  beauty,  owes  its  existence  to  the  pain  of 
the  wounded  oyster, —  and  as  the  pate-de-foie-gras,  which 
is  so  delicious  to  the  epicure,  owes  its  excellence  to  the 
preternaturally  swollen  liver  of  the  wretched  animal  that 
furnishes  it, —  so  many  of  our  virtues  may  grow  out  of 
a  constitutional  infirmity  or  unsoundness,  or  be  connected 
with  a  radical  vice  of  character.  Our  virtues  and  vices 
are  often  stalks  from  the  same  root,  and,  if  you  uproot 
the  one,  you  are  very  liable  to  pluck  up  the  other.  "  The 
shrub  which  bears  the  most  beautiful  of  flowers  is  that 
which  also  bears  the  keenest  of  thorns."  John  Howard, 
the  philanthropist,  grudged  no  toil  or  sacrifice  that  would 
lessen  the  wretchedness  in  prisons;  but  he  was  either 
destitute  of  natural  affections,  or  his  zeal  for  the  public 
good  devoured  them,  for,  we  are  told  that  he  was  a  tyrant 
in  his  own  household,  and  by  his  neglect  suffered  his  son 
to  fall  into  dissolute  habits  which  ended  in  madness.  He 
was  the  author  of  a  system  of  solitary  confinement,  which, 
no  doubt  with  the  best  of  motives,  he  recommended  in 
the  treatment  of  refractory  boys, — "  for  which  "  even  the 
gentle  Charles  Lamb,  recollecting  the  horrors  he  had  seen 
at  Christ's  Hospital,  could  say,  "  I  could  spit  on  his  statue." 
Even  where  there  is  the  most  perfect  exemption  from 
the  common  run  of  vices,  there  is  usually  some  other 
enormous  one,  which,  like  Aaron's  rod,  swallows  up  all 
the  rest.  The  Duke  of  Alva,  Robespierre,  and  Napoleon, 
were  much  less  liable  to  petty  vices  than  the  average 
mortal.  An  English  essayist  tells  us  that  he  was  ac 
quainted  in  his  younger  days  with  a  man  who  at  first 
seemed  superior  to  every  foible  whatever,  and  whom  he 
looked  upon  as  a  paragon  of  self-denial,  until  he  met  him 


THE   IDEAL   AND   THE   REAL.  121 

one  evening  at  supper,  when  he  found  him  eating  and 
drinking  so  enormously,  that  it  was  easy  to  see  that  glut 
tony  was  a  moral  infirmity  which  in  him  had  swallowed 
up  or  precluded  all  others.  It  is  no  libel  to  say  that  some 
of  the  ultra  advocates  of  "  teetotalism  "  have  Gargantua- 
like  appetites  for  "links  and  chitterlings";  they  compen 
sate  for  the  banished  crystal  by  the  more  frequent  crock 
ery.  While  human  nature  remains  unchanged,  men  will 
continue,  as  in  the  days  of  Butler,  to 

"Compound  for  sins  they  are  inclined  to, 
By  damning  those  they  have  no  mind  to." 

Again,  as  there  are  faces  in  the  individual  features  of 
which  no  blemish  can  be  found,  but  which  show  no  posi 
tive  beauty,  so  there  are  persons  of  faultless  character  who 
have  no  positive  virtues.  They  harm  nobody;  they  never 
lie,  exaggerate,  backbite,  cheat,  or  steal;  but  neither,  on 
the  other  hand,  do  they  ever  do  any  great  good.  If  they 
can  but  attain  to  this  negative  excellence,  they  are  "  con 
tent  to  dwell  in  decencies  forever."  A  fellow- traveler  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  once  happily  characterized  this  entire 
class  of  men.  Riding  one  night  with  "  old  Abe "  on  the 
box  of  a  stage-coach,  in  southern  Illinois,  he  sat  for  hours 
in  moody  silence,  puffing  away  at  a  cigar,  and  at  last 
offered  one  to  his  companion.  Lincoln  courteously  de 
clined  to  accept  it,  saying:  "Thank  you;  I  have  no  'vices.'" 
The  smoker  did  not  open  his  lips  again  for  three  hours, 
at  the  end  of  which  time  he  "  grunted  out,"  as  Lincoln 
says,  the  following  sa.ge  observation:  "It  has  ever  been 
my  experience  that  folks  that  have  no  vices  have  plaguey 
few  virtues."  Gray,  the  poet,  was  a  man  of  this  stamp. 
He  wrote  a  few  beautiful  poems,  one  an  "  entire  and  per- 


122  THE   IDEAL   AKD   THE   REAL. 

feet  chrysolite'1  which  will  last  forever.  But  what  has 
he  left  to  justify  the  opinion  of  his  biographer  that  he 
was  probably  the  most  learned  man,  in  his  day,  in  Europe? 
His  vast  stores  of  knowledge,  instead  of  being  a  running 
fountain  to  fertilize  the  wastes  of  society,  appear  to  have 
been,  for  the  most  part,  a  stagnant  reservoir.  Overladen 
with  intellectual  wealth,  he  became  over-refined  and  pain 
fully  fastidious  by  contemplating  the  models  which  were 
perpetually  before  him.  "  Too  much  honey  clogged  his 
wings." 

"Ten  thousand  great  ideas  filled  his  mind, 
But  with  the  clouds  they  fled,  and  left  no  trace  behind." 

Many  an  author  with  glaring  faults  has  done  more  good 
to  his  fellow-beings. 

Why  is  it  that  we  have  so  little  love  for  "  good " 
people,  that  there  is  an  undertone  of  irony  in  the  words 
"He  is  a  very  good  man"?  Is  it  because  the  world  hates 
goodness,  as  is  sometimes  rashly  said?  Is  it  because  we 
envy  those  whom  we  despair  of  imitating?  No,  the  true 
secret  of  our  distaste  is,  that  the  virtue  of  those  who  are 
known  in  society  as  "good  people"  springs  from  a  defi 
ciency  in  their  mental  and  moral  organization,  not  from 
superior  conscientiousness  or  more  heroic  conflicts  with 
temptation  than  other  men  have  known.  It  is  because 
they  are  not  tempted  that  they  do  not  fall  into  sin;  and 
they  are  never  tempted,  not  because  they  are  above,  but 
because  they  are  beneath,  temptation.  One  must  have  a 
certain  amount  of  mental  vigor  to  be  strongly  tempted; 
and,  therefore,  the  dull,  lazy,  passionless,  unimaginative 
man,  who  has  no  cravings  for  forbidden  fruit,  who  has  no 
fancy  to  paint  the  charms  and  delights  of  unlawful 


THE   IDEAL   AND   THE   REAL.  123 

pleasure,  is  never  sorely  tried, —  hardly  imperilled, —  and 
"  stands  a  monument  of  stupid  virtue."  This  is  the  reason 
why  we  dislike  the  so-called  "good  people";  as  another 
has  said,  "  for  the  same  reason  that  we  cannot  herd  with 
the  inferior  animals  of  the  creation,  we  cannot  fraternize 
with  them.  We  are  a  little  lower  than  the  angels,  and 
they  are  only  a  very  little  higher  than  the  brutes.  *  It  is 
our  weaknesses  alone  that  render  us  lovable,'  says  Goethe; 
and  therefore  our  pleasure  is  to  walk  and  talk  with  those 
who  have  been  '  tried,  troubled,  and  tempted,' — who  have 
enjoyed  and  suffered  like  ourselves.  We  make  bosom 
friends  of  these,  even  though  they  may  have  sinned  and 
fallen.  The  beating  of  a  warm  though  erring  heart  is 
dearer  to  us  than  the  cold  and  clammy  life  of  the  reptile 
that  has  ever  so  long  lived  imbedded  in  stone."  Did  not 
our  Saviour  recognize  this  principle,  when  he  said  of  an 
erring  woman:  "Much  is  forgiven  her  because  she  loved 
much  "  ? 

If  the  views  we  have  taken  are  just,  it  follows  that 
nothing  can  be  more  unreasonable  than  many  of  the  com 
plaints  that  are  made  against  men  of  genius,  both  by  critics 
and  moralists.  How  often  is  a  writer,  who  has  certain 
acknowledged  excellences,  censured  because  he  has  not 
certain  others  that  are  inconsistent  with  them!  A  wine- 
drinker  does  not  object  to  sparkling  champagne  that  it 
has  not  the  body  of  old  port;  yet  how  often  is  an  author, 
who  charms  us  by  his  Addisonian  elegance  and  pleasantry, 
or  by  a  negligent  grace  like  that  of  Goldsmith,  found  fault 
with  because  he  has  not  the  sententious  gravity  of  Bacon 
or  the  pregnant  brevity  of  Butler!  A  critic  who  is  never 
tired  of  extolling  the  terseness,  point,  and  polish  of  Lan- 
dor's  style,  laments  that  it  has  not  the  pornp,  variety,  and 


124  THE   IDEAL   AND  THE   REAL. 

richness  of  hue  which  surprise  and  delight  the  reader  of 
De  Quincey;  and,  again,  a  critic  who  is  in  raptures  with 
De  Quincey's  structural  perfection  of  sentence,  and  es 
pecially  with  its  "  blending  of  rhythmical  and  impassioned 
music  with  a  Greek-like  propriety  of  phrase  and  a  logical 
accuracy  of  thought,"  dashes  the  praise  with  a  regret  that 
the  workmanship  excels  the  stuff, —  as  if  anything  else 
were  to  be  expected  from  a  writer  endowed  so  dispropor 
tionately  with  the  faculty  of  expression.  Carlyle,  without 
his  German  compounds,  his  exaggerations,  his  ellipses  that 
yawn  with  chasms  wide  enough  to  engulf  all  thought, 
would  be  a  more  correct  and  classic  writer;  but  without 
his  mannerism,  he  would  be  Carlyle  no  longer.  We  can 
not  have  in  the  same  writer  Macaulay's  champagne-like 
exhilaration  of  style,  his  sparkling  antithesis,  epigram,  and 
point,  and  the  simplicity  of  Defoe,  or  the  thoughtful  repose 
of  Henry  Taylor.  We  cannot  combine  the  luxuriant  full 
ness  of  Plato  and  the  elliptic  brevity  of  Aristotle.  Livy 
could  no  more  have  written  like  Tacitus  than  Rembrandt 
could  have  painted  like  Teniers.  The  prophet  Ezekiel 
would  have  wanted  his  peculiar  excellences  of  vgtyle  had 
he  possessed  those  of  Isaiah;  Paul,  without  his  abrupt 
transitions,  his  long  parentheses,  and  his  occasional  ob 
scurities,  would  lose  some  of  his  most  distinctive  char 
acteristics. 

How  common  it  is  to  see  great  conceptions  in  a  book 
or  a  painting  marred  by  weakness  of  expression,  or  strength 
of  expression  squandered  on  poor  conceptions!  How  often 
does  a  Haydon  fail  to  embody  ideals  to  the  height  of  which 
a  Lawrence  or  a  Reynolds,  with  all  his  mastery  of  ex 
pression,  could  never  rise  !  The  styles  of  Hooker  and 
Butler  fall  as  much  below  their  best  thought  as  those  of 


THE   IDEAL  AND   THE   REAL.  125 

William  Melmoth  and  Alexander  Smith  tower  above  their 
highest  ideas.  As  we  have  already  shown,  the  very  gifts 
of  a  writer  have  a  disqualifying  tendency,  so  that  every 
advantage  he  enjoys  is  accompanied  with  a  corresponding 
loss.  How  many  artists  are  cramped  and  weighted  by  an 
undue  development  of  the  critical  faculty,  which  yet  is 
absolutely  indispensable  to  any  high  attainment!  Critical 
insight  and  creative  power  are  not  necessarily  foes,  for  a 
broad  basis  of  spiritual  sympathy  underlies  them  both ;  but 
so  rarely  are  they  united  in  the  same  mind,  and  especially 
at  the  same  moment,  that  they  may  be  regarded  as  prac 
tically  incompatible.  A  late  writer  justly  observes  that 
though  a  due  proportion  and  balance  of  gifts  wonderfully 
enhance  their  value,  yet  proportion  and  balance  are  them 
selves  a  disqualification  in  some  directions.  The  very  un 
rest  and  dissatisfaction  of  an  ill-balanced  mind  give  it  a 
certain  impetus,  which  is  wanting  to  the  more  harmoni 
ously  constituted.  What  painter  has  more  glaring  faults 
than  Rubens?  and  yet,  what  painter  surpasses  him  in  com 
pass  and  variety  of  artistic  power?  Strange  to  say,  there 
was  a  weakness  even  in  his  strength;  for  even  amid  his 
inexhaustible  fruitfulness  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  recognized 
one  smooth,  flat  face  continually  recurring.  Mrs.  Stowe, 
in  her  book  of  travel,  speaks  of  him  as  "the  great,  joy 
ous,  full-souled,  all-powerful  Rubens;  full  of  triumphant, 
abounding  life;  disgusting  and  pleasing;  making  me  laugh, 
and  making  me  angry;  defying  me  to  dislike  him;  drag 
ging  me  at  his  chariot-wheels;  in  despite  of  my  protests, 
forcing  me  to  confess  there  was  no  other  but  he.  Like 
Shakspeare,  he  forces  you  to  accept  and  forgive  a  thou 
sand  excesses,  and  uses  his  own  faults  as  musicians  use 
discords,  only  to  enhance  the  perfection  of  harmony."  She 


126  THE    IDEAL   AND   THE   REAL. 

adds:  "There  is  certainly  some  use  even  in  defects.  A 
faultless  style  sends  you  to  sleep.  Defects  arouse  and 
excite  the  sensibility  to  seek  excellences.  Some  of  Shak- 
speare's  finest  passages  explode  all  grammar  like  sky-rock 
ets:  the  thought  blows  the  language  to  shivers." 

As  with  their  literary  faults,  so  with  the  moral  flaws 
and  blemishes  of  men  of  genius;  they  are  often  repre 
hended  when,  perhaps,  a  profound  consideration  of  their 
constitution  would  lead  us  to  doubt  whether  their  strong 
points  and  their  weak  ones  are  not  inseparably  blended. 
That  which  was  said  of  a  certain  philosopher,  that  if  he 
had  not  erred  he  would  have  done  less  (si  non  errasset 
fecerat  ille  minus),  must  often  be  said  of  other  men. 
Whether  genius  be  or  be  not  a  disease,  as  some  affirm  it 
to  be,  it  is  certain  that  it  is  often  attended  with  some  con 
stitutional  infirmity  to  which  it  seems  closely  allied.  Na 
ture,  for  some  reason,  seems  often  to  take  a  cruel  delight 
in  spoiling  her  fairest  handiwork,  yoking  together  the  most 
opposite  gifts  and  qualities,  mingling  strength  and  weak 
ness,  wisdom  and  foolishness,  strangely  together,  like  the 
notes  of  "bells  that  are  jangled  and  out  of  tune."  Alex 
ander  Pope,  "the  little  wasp  of  Twickenham,"  had  a  con 
stitutional  irritability  which  involved  him  in  incessant  war 
fare  with  the  small  .wits  and  poets  of  his  time;  yet  who 
can  doubt  that  this  very  irritability  of  temper  was  closely 
connected  with,  if  not  an  assential  part  of,  the  exquisite 
genius  which  charms  us  in  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock "  and 
the  "Essay  on  Man?1'  We  deplore  the  misanthropy,  coarse 
ness,  and  virulence  of  Swift;  but  we  are  too  apt  to  forget 
that,  had  he  been  a  model  of  clerical  decorum,  that  master 
piece  of  satire,  the  "  Tale  of  a  Tub,"  would  have  remained 
unwritten.  We  deplore,  again,  the  fierce  passions  of  Burns, 


THE   IDEAL   AND   THE    REAL.  127 

which  hurried  him  into  so  many  excesses,  and  caused  an 
early  extinction  of  his  genius;  yet  who  can  say  that  the 
"fiery  sleet"  of  thought  and  sentiment  that  drives  along 
in  Burns's  page,  and  the  headlong  fervors  which  hurried 
him  over  the  brink  of  moral  propriety,  had  not  some  com 
mon  root,  so  that,  had  we  been  spared  the  contemplation 
of  his  errors,  we  might  also  have  lost  the  enjoyment  of  his 
songs  ?  Travelers  say  that  on  the  sides  of  volcanoes,  in 
the  cool  crust  of  what  was  once  red-hot  lava,  can  be  found 
luxuriant  vines,  bending  with  grapes  of  the  most  delicious 
flavor;  and  so  in  the  soul  of  Burns,  convulsed  by  volcanic 
passions,  flourished  and  thrived  some  of  the  noblest  and 
tenderest  sentiments  of  humanity.  We  lament,  as  we  read 
the  impassioned  verse  of  Byron,  that  his  life  should  have 
been  spent  in  chasing  all  the  Protean  forms  of  pleasure, 
only  to  find  the  subtle  essence  escape  as  soon  as  grasped, 
leaving  but  the  languor  and  satiety  of  the  jaded  voluptu 
ary;  yet  who  cannot  see  that  his  elemental  force,  his  vehe 
ment  sensibility,  his  Rubens-like  facility  of  touch,  and  the 
sensuous  melody  of  his  verse,  together  with  his  wit,  manly 
sense,  and  knowledge  of  the  world, —  in  short,  all  his  lead 
ing  qualities  as  a  poet, —  are  intimately  allied  to  that 
egotism  and  unrest,  that  contempt  for  public  opinion  and 
the  conventional  maxims  of  society,  which  led  him  fear 
lessly  to  attempt  to  solve  the  problem  of  life  in  his  own 
way,  and  to  show  by  his  discomfiture  the  misery  of  him 
who  lives  for  self,  and  drains  the  cup  of  pleasure  to  its 
dregs?  Sir  Walter  Scott  was  ruined  by  his  ambition  for 
baronial  honors;  but  was  not  this  weakness  the  same  pecu 
liarity  of  mind  which,  by  interesting  him  in  the  customs 
and  manners  of  antiquity,  and  filling  his  writings  with 


128  THE   IDEAL   AKD    THE    REAL. 

mediaeval  allusion,   enabled   him,  as  the  "  Wizard  of  the 
North,"  to  charm  the  civilized  world? 

Again,  how  common,  yet  how  unreasonable,  is  the  com 
plaint  made  against  authors,  that  they  do  not  fully  exem 
plify  in  their  lives  the  precepts  they  enforce  in  their  writ 
ings  !  In  making  the  acquaintance  of  a  writer  whose 
printed  page  has  stiffened  our  moral  backbone  and  flooded 
our  whole  spiritual  being  with  energy, —  who  has  filled  our 
souls  with  a  noble  scorn  of  all  baseness  and  meanness,  and 
animated  us  with  an  earnest  determination  to  "  quit  our 
selves  like  men"  in  all  the  relations  of  life, —  we  expect, 
as  the  merest  matter  of  course,  a  second  and  even  greater 
influx  of  that  invigorating  power.  We  think  that  the 
teaching  conveyed  before  in  words  will  be  repeated  now 
in  a  more  impressive  form,  and  that  he  who  has  pointed 
us  to  ideals  glimmering  above  us  in  radiance  and  beauty 
like  Alpine  summits,  must  himself  be  qualified  to  guide 
us  along  the  rocky  paths,  and  by  the  yawning  precipices 
that  intervene  between  us  and  those  serene  heights;  that 
he  who  has  "  allured  to  brighter  worlds "  will  himself 
"lead  the  way."  We  might, —  as  another  has  well  said, — 
as  well  expect  him  to  have  strong  legs  because  he  has  keen 
sight.  We  forget  that  speculative  and  practical  ability  are 
too  distinct  kinds  of  talent,  which  are  often  combined  in 
very  unequal  proportions;  that  though  both  are  forms  of 
mental  power,  yet  one  no  more  implies  the  other  than 
dexterity  in  feats  of  legerdemain  implies  the  art  of  leap 
ing  a  five-barred  gate,  or  of  "  witching  the  world  with  noble 
horsemanship,"  though  these  are  all  instances  of  physical 
skill.  Again,  it  is  evident  that  a  man's  writings  may  im 
poverish  his  life;  that  he  may  put  all  his  good  things  into 
the  one,  and  leave  none  for  the  other,  just  as  a  man  may 


THE    IDEAL    AND   THE    EEAL.  129 

expend  his  fortune  in  dress,  and  starve  his  body  and  mind. 
While  other  men  have  had  the  whole  energy  of  their  nature 
to  throw  into  action,  his  has  been  already  drained  when 
he  leaves  his  study  and  enters  the  world.  The  force  which 
they  have  expended  in  deeds  he  has  expended  in  originat 
ing  and  uttering  the  moral  ideas  which  have  been  their 
trumpet-call  to  duty,  and  enough  has  not  remained  to  work 
these  ideas  into  his  own  life. 

The  remarks  we  have  made  about  literary  men  of 
genius  apply  with  equal  force  to  great  reformers.  How 
often  do  we  hear  it  lamented  that  a  Luther,  a  Knox,  or 
a  Garrison,  when  attacking  the  wicked  institutions  or 
well-fortified  abuses  of  his  time,  is  not  more  temperate 
and  charitable  in  his  language!  Would  he  be  equally 
strenuous  and  energetic,  without  indulging  in  such  vehe 
mence  and  coarseness  of  denunciation,  he  would  be  a  pattern 
reformer.  The  critic  does  not  perceive  that  without  that 
fierceness  of  spirit  which  leads  to  such  excesses,  the  re 
former  would  be  incapable  of  performing  the  tremendous 
tasks  he  undertakes.  Broad-axes  cannot  have  the  delicate 
edge  of  razors.  A  man  may  possibly  be,  as  Heine  says 
of  Luther,  at  the  same  time  a  dreamy  mystic  and  a  prac 
tical  man  of  action, —  a  scholastic  word-thresher  and  an 
inspired,  God-intoxicated  prophet;  but  he  cannot  be,  at 
the  same  moment,  "  as  wild  as  the  storm  that  uproots  the 
oak,  and  gentle  as  the  zephyr  that  dallies  with  the  violet." 
It  often  happens  in  this  world  that,  as  De  Maistre  says, 
"a  sufficiency  does  not  suffice"  (ce  qui  sujfit  ne  suffit  pas)] 
and,  as  he  adds,  we  are  never  sure  of  our  moral  qualities, 
till  we  have  learned  to  give  them  a  little  exaltation.  If 
a  person  attempts  to  throw  you  down,  it  is  not  enough 
to  stiffen  up  against  him;  you  must  strike  him  and  make 


130  THE   IDEAL   AtfD   THE   REAL. 

him  recoil.  To  clear  a  ditch,  you  must  look  beyond  the 
farther  edge,  if  you  would  not  tumble  in.  In  like  manner, 
he  who  would  batter  down  any  mighty  evil,  any  strong 
fortress  of  superstition  or  error,  must  not  nicely  calculate 
the  amount  of  force  to  be  used;  he  must  deal  the  heaviest 
blows  in  his  power.  The  men  by  whom  the  world  has 
been  most  benefited  have  usually  been  men  of  strong 
passions  and  broad  social  sympathies.  These  passions  and 
sympathies  lead  them  into  many  errors  and  excesses;  but 
we  must  take  the  evil  with  the  good,  nor  quarrel  with 
the  winds  that  give  life  and  freshness  to  the  intellect, 
though  they  sometimes  swell  into  a  storm  or  even  a 
hurricane.  Gentleness,  moderation  and  courtesy  are  ex 
cellent  qualities  in  themselves;  but  to  suppose  them  in  a 
sturdy,  thorough-going  reformer,  is  to  suppose  an  intel 
lectual  paradox, —  a  moral  monster, —  a  being  born  under 
the  contending  influences  of  Mercury  and  Saturn.  As  an 
able  writer  has  said:  "  There  is  but  one  alternative  in 
the  matter.  Either  the  rudeness  of  reformers  must  be 
tolerated  for  the  sake  of  the  necessary  boldness,  or  the 
boldness  must  be  wanted  also,  and  the  work  remain  un 
performed.  It  is  here  as  in  the  ordinary  walks  of  life: 
we  must  not  expect  butchers  to  be  men  of  exquisitely 
sensitive  and  refined  feelings,  nor  scavengers  to  have 
the  squeamishness  or  delicacy  of  gentlemen.  Those  who 
bewail  the  want  of  soft  and  courteous  qualities  in  a 
Luther,  might  as  reasonably  expect  to  see  the  hurricane 
pause  in  its  tremendous  but  perhaps  necessary  mission, 
in  order  to  waft  a  pleasure  bark  across  some  fairy  lake, 
or  fan  the  cheek  of  beauty  in  her  rosy  bower." 


FAT  vs.  LEAK 


A  MONG  the  witty  passages  in  the  writings  of  the  late 
-*--*-  Henry  Giles  is  a  panegyric  upon  fat  men,  of  whom 
he  may  be  considered  the  laureate.  There  is  something 
cordial,  he  asserts,  in  a  fat  man.  Everybody  likes  him, 
and  he  likes  everybody.  He  is  a  living,  walking  minister 
of  gratitude  to  the  bounty  of  the  earth  and  the  fullness 
thereof;  an  incarnate  testimony  against  the  vanities  of 
care;  a  radiant  manifestation  of  the  wisdom  of  good 
humor.  A  fat  man,  almost  in  virtue  of  being  fat,  is, 
per  se,  a  popular  man;  he  has  an  abundance  of  rich 
juices,  and,  the  hinges  of  his  system  being  well  oiled  and 
his  springs  noiseless,  he  goes  on  his  way  rejoicing,  full  of 
contentment  and  placidity.  A  fat  man,  it  is  argued  again, 
feels  his  position  solid;  "he  knows  that  his  being  is  cog 
nizable-,  he  knows  that  he  has  a  marked  place  in  the 
universe,  and  that  he  need  take  no  extraordinary  pains 
to  advertise  to  mankind  that  he  is  among  them.  He 
knows  that  he  is  in  no  danger  of  being  overlooked.  A 
fat  man  has  also  the  decided  advantage  of  being  the 
nearest  to  that  most  perfect  of  figures,  a  mathematical 
sphere,  while  a  thin  man  approximates  to  a  simple  line. 
Moreover,  a  fat  man  is  a  being  of  harmonious  volume, 
and  holds  relations  to  the  material  universe  in  every  di 
rection,  while  the  thin  man  has  nothing  but  length, —  is, 
in  fact,  but  the  continuation  of  a  point." 

All  this  is  well  put,  and  the  logic,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is 

131 


132  FAT  VS.   LEAK. 

without  a  flaw;  but  the  argument  is  like  a  jug-handle, 
all  on  one  side.  Obesity,  as  well  as  leanness,  has  its  dis 
advantages.  Who  pays  the  largest  bills  to  his  tailor, 
and  requires  the  most  time  to  dress  and  undress,  to  go 
to  sleep  or  to  wake  up  all  over?  Which,  when  in  a 
hurry,  has  the  advantage, —  the  man  who  lugs  about  a 
load  of  flesh,  like  Atlas  carrying  the  globe  on  his  shoulders, 
or  he  who,  composed  of  skin  and  bones  only,  darts  from 
place  to  place  with  the  agility  of  a  grasshopper?  Who,  in 
a  crowded  church  or  lecture-room,  is  squeezed  the  hardest, 
and  who  suffers  most  from  hydrostatic  pressure  in  a  horse- 
car?  Whose  sides  are  grazed  by  narrow  doorways,  and  who 
in  war  presents  the  biggest  mark  to  the  bullets  of  the 
enemy?  Who  tumbles  from  stage-coaches  or  rolls  down 
staircases  or  precipices  with  the  greatest  momentum;  and 
who  is  refused  admission  into  light  or  loaded  vehicles? 
True,  the  fat  man  is  warmest  in  winter;  but  though  he 
may  crow  over  his  thin  neighbor  in  January,  see  him 
under  the  sweltering  heats  of  dog-days,  when  "  the  whirli 
gig  of  time  has  brought  around  its  revenges," — how  he 
puffs,  and  blows,  and  "  lards  the  lean  earth  as  he  walks 
along"!  You  no  longer  hear  the  merry  chuckle  with 
which  in  winter  he  cried  out  to  his  thin  neighbor,  "Away, 
you  starveling;  you  eel-skin;  you  dried  neat's  tongue; 
you  stock-fish!"  Gladly  would  he  now  exchange  the 
mountain  of  flesh  which  he  trundles  along  for  the  ghost 
like  anatomy  of  his  neighbor.  No  doubt  the  fat  man  is 
more  visible  than  the  lean  man.  It  is  hard,  sometimes, 
for  the  fleshless  man  to  convince  the  world  that  he  is 
somebody;  that  he  is  an  actual  entity,  a  positive  sub 
stance,  as  well  as  his  corpulent  fellow-creature.  There  is 
a  full  abstract  admission  of  his  equality;  he  counts  as  a 


FAT   VS.    LEAK.  133 

soul  in  population  returns  and  paragraphs  about  accidents, 
the  same  as  the  fat  man;  he  is  the  same  in  the  eye  of 
the  law,  pays  the  same  taxes,  has  alike  his  epitaph  and 
his  elegy.  But  the  fat  man  has  only  to  appear,  and  the 
poor  fellow  is  absolutely  lost  in  the  obscurity  of  the  fat 
man's  shadow.  "The  fat  man  has  only  to  speak,  and  he 
drowns  the  treble  squeal  of  his  fleshless  brother  in  the 
depths  of  his  bass,  as  the  full  swell  of  an  organ  overpowers 
the  whistle  of  a  penny  trumpet." 

But  how  is  it  in  times  of  danger?  Who  is  it  that,  if 
shy  or  sensitive,  finds  it  impossible  to  escape  observation? 
Who,  when  hunted  by  a  detective,  tries  in  vain  to  crawl 
through  small  holes,  or  to  stow  himself  in  a  cranny  or 
snug  hiding-place?  Who,  serving  on  juries,  shrinks  and 
shrivels  till  he  can  hardly  recognize  his  own  identity, — 
beginning  the  term  with  two  hundred  avoirdupois,  and 
ending  it  with  a  lightness  that  can  hardly  turn  a  money- 
scale?  It  is  another  great  disadvantage  of  the  fat  man 
that  he  lacks  spirituality.  The  man  who  is  fat  bodily  is 
apt  to  be  lean  intellectually.  A  corpulent  intellectualist 
is,  in  fact,  a  contradiction  in  terms, —  a  palpable  cata- 
chresis.  You  might  as  well  talk  of  a  brick  balloon,  a 
sedentary  will-o'-the  wisp,  a  pot-bellied  spirit,  or  a  lazy 
lightning.  Tn  gross,  carneous  bodies,  the  thinking  prin 
ciple  is  buried  under  a  mountain  of  flesh,  like  Enceladus 
under  ^Etna.  The  spirit  is  apt  to  be  like  a  little  fish  in 
a  large  frying  pan  of  fat,  which  is  either  totally  absorbed 
or  tastes  of  nothing  but  the  lard.  No  great  deeds  are 
ever  done  by  fat  men.  They  are  too  sluggish  to  set  the 
world  on  fire.  It  is  your  spare,  spiritualized  beings, — 
men  who  can  distinctly  feel  and  reckon  their  own  ribs, — 
men  in  whom  the  fiery  soul  has  o'erinformed  its  integu- 


134  FAT   VS.   LEAN". 

ment  of  clay, —  that   stir   up   revolutions,  and   set  whole 
nations  by  the  ears. 

Alexander  was  a  spare  man,  and  so  was  Caesar.  Bona 
parte  was  thin  as  long  as  he  climbed  the  ladder;  Nelson 
was  a  shadow;  Suwarrow  was  a  spectre;  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  offered  only  an  edge  to  his  enemy,  and  had 
hardly  oil  enough  in  his  whole  composition  to  keep  his 
joints  from  creaking.  Gregory  the  Seventh,  the  mightiest 
of  the  Popes,  was  of  diminutive  size;  and  so  was  Robes 
pierre,  one  of  the  master-spirits  of  the  French  Revolution, 
who  by  his  force  of  will  "  ruled  the  whirlwind  and  directed 
the  storm  "  longer  than  any  of  his  rivals.  Lewis  the  Four 
teenth,  who  passed  for  a  large  man  in  his  life-time,  was 
considerably  under  the  average  size,  and  Napoleon  the 
Third  was  really,  as  Hugo  termed  him,  "  Napoleon  the 
Little,"  being  but  little  more  than  five  feet  high.  Athana- 
sius,  who  triumphed  over  the  tall  Arius  at  the  Council 
of  Nice,  and  by  his  intellectual  might  and  combativeness 
suggested  the  proverb,  "Athanasius  contra  mundum"  was 
rather  a  dwarf  than  a  man.  Dr.  Watts;  Pope,  the  "little 
crooked  thing  that  asked  questions";  Chillingworth,  the 
giant  polemic;  Montaigne,  the  prince  of  essayists;  and 
Scarron,  who  called  himself  "  an  abridgment  of  human 
miseries," — were  all  small  men.  Of  Sidney  Godolphin  Lord 
Clarendon  says:  "There  was  never  so  great  a  mind  and 
spirit  contained  in  so  little  room."  Alexander  Hamilton 
was  slender  and  below  the  average  height;  the  brave 
General  Marion  was  short  and  lean;  and  Dr.  Kane,  who 
surpassed  all  his  companions  in  braving  torrid  heat  and 
polar  cold,  was  but  five  feet  six  in  height,  and  weighed 
but  135  pounds.  Burton,  in  his  "Anatomy,"  tells  us  that 
Uladislaus  Cubitatis,  "that  pigmy  king  of  Poland,"  who 


FAT   VS.    LEAK.  135 

reigned  about  A.D.  1306,  fought  more  victorious  battles 
than  any  of  his  long-shanked  predecessors;  and  he  adds: 
"Nullam  virtus  respuit  staturam  (virtue  refuseth  no  stat 
ure)  ;  and  commonly  your  great,  vast  bodies  and  fine  feat 
ures  are  sottish,  dull,  and  leaden  spirits.  What's  in 
them?  Quid  nisi  pondus  iners  stolidaeque  ferveia  mentis. 
What  in  Osus  and  Ephialtes  (Neptune's  sons  in  Homer), 
nine  acres  long?  What  in  Maximinus,  Ajax,  Caligula, 
and  the  rest  of  those  great  Zanzummins,  or  gigantical 
Anakims,  heavy,  vast,  barbarous  lubbers?" 

Were  our  country  at  war  with  another,  who  would 
not  prefer,  for  commander-in-chief,  a  lean,  fiery  Andrew 
Jackson,  prompt  as  a  hair-trigger  pistol,  to  a  Daniel- 
Lambert-like  warrior, —  a  huge  mountain  of  flesh  in  whom 
the  vis  inertice  overpowers  all  the  other  forces  of  his 
nature?  It  is  the  thin  blade  that  pierces  deepest,  and 
the  lean  horse  generally  wins  the  race.  "  What  care  I 
for  the  bulk  of  a  man  ? "  says  the  candid  fat  Falstaff. 
"  Give  me  the  spirit,  Master  Shallow, —  I  say,  give  me 
the  spirit."  "  Nothing  fat,"  says  a  writer,  "  ever  yet  en 
lightened  the  world;  for,  even  in  a  tallow-candle,  the 
illumination  proceeds  from  the  wick."  Shakspeare  holds 
the  same  doctrine: 

Fat  paunches  make  lean  pates;  and  dainty  bits 
Make  rich  the  ribs,  but  bankrupt  quite  the  wits." 

Again,  not  only  are  all  heroic  deeds  impossible  by  a 
fat  man,  but  it  is  equally  hard  to  associate  sentiment 
with  obesity.  Who  can  think  without  a  smile  of  a  fat 
man  in  love?  Who  ever  read  without  merriment  the 
story  of  Gibbon,  the  fat  historian  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
going  down  on  his  knees  to  make  love,  and  finding  it 


136  FAT   VS.   LEA1S". 

impossible  to  get  up  till  the  lady  rang  the  bell  for  the 
footman  to  help  him?  On  the  other  hand,  it  should  be 
remembered  to  their  credit  that  fat  men  are  almost  in 
variably  kind-hearted  and  of  a  forgiving  spirit.  Never  do 
you  find  them  cherishing  spite  and  studying  schemes  of 
vengeance;  never  writing  carping  criticisms,  or  joining 
secret  associations  for  attacking  their  fellow- workmen  or 
shooting  emperors.  The  very  faults  of  fat  men  are  of  a 
kind  that  awaken  sympathy  rather  than  anger.  As  Fal- 
staff  said  of  himself,  they  "have  more  flesh  than  other 
men,  therefore  more  frailty." 

On  the  whole,  the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of 
both  fatness  and  leanness  are  so  nearly  balanced  that  we 
may  consider  the  discussion  a  drawn  game.  There  are 
extreme  cases  on  record,  both  of  obesity  and  leanness, 
either  of  which  would  give  us  pause  were  we  compelled 
to  choose  between  them.  One  would  not  care  to  be  so 
fat  that  other  persons  would  slip  down  by  just  treading 
on  his  shadow;  nor  would  he  care  to  be  so  lean  that  he 
could  not  himself  cast  a  shadow.  There  are  few  of  us 
so  partial  to  pinguitude  that  we  would  covet  a  wife  as 
big  as  the  Yankee's,  who  complained  that  he  could  not 
embrace  her  all  at  once,  but  was  obliged  to  make  a  chalk- 
mark  at  the  ultima  thule  of  his  caresses,  and  then  begin 
again  where  he  had  left  off.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is 
an  extreme  of  leanness  which  is  hardly  less  undesirable. 
Jeffrey,  the  reviewer,  was  so  thin  that  Sydney  Smith  de 
clared  that  "  he  has  not  body  enough  to  cover  his  mind 
decently  with;  his  intellect  is  improperly  exposed."  Fal- 
staff  tells  of  an  acquaintance  of  his  who  was  such  a  dag 
ger  of  lath,  that  you  "  might  have  trussed  him  and  all 
his  apparel  into  an  eel-skin;  the  case  of  a  treble  hautboy 


FAT   VS.    LEAN.  137 

was  a  mansion  for  him  and  court."  A  story  is  told  of  a 
poor  diminutive  Frenchman,  who,  being  ordered  by  his 
Sangrado  to  drink  a  quart  of  pitsan  daily,  replied,  with 
a  heavy  sigh,  "Alas!  doctor,  that  is  impossible,  for  I  Hold 
only  a  pint!'1'1  The  Duke  de  Choiseul  was  so  meagre  a 
man,  that,  when  he  came  to  London  to  negotiate  a  peace, 
Charles  Townshend,  being  asked  if  the  French  Govern 
ment  had  sent  the  preliminaries  of  a  treaty,  replied:  "I 
do  not  know;  but  they  have  sent  me  the  outline  of  an 
ambassador.'1'1  Still  more  remarkable  was  the  leanness  of 
a  French  priest,  who  lived  many  years  ago.  Shrivelling 
up  more  and  more  daily,  he  became  at  last  so  thin  and 
dry  in  his  articulations,  that  he  was  unable  to  go  through 
the  celebration  of  mass,  as  his  joints  and  spine  would 
crack  in  so  loud  and  strange  a  manner  at  every  genuflec 
tion,  that  the  faithful  were  terrified,  and  the  faithless 
laughed.  This  story  may  be  regarded  as  "too  thin"  for 
belief;  we  admit  that  it  is  the  ''''knee  plus  ultra"  of  its 
class. 

Per  contra,  it  is  on  record  that  a  Frenchwoman  was  so 
fat  that  she  took  fire.  An  old  chronicler  tells  of  a  French 
princess  who  was  afflicted  with  such  an  excess  of  pingui- 
tude  that  she  melted  after  she  was  embalmed.  A  lady  was 
once  spoken  of  in  Sydney  Smith's  presence,  who  was  So 
inordinately  stout  that  he  declared  that  "were  she"  to  rise 
in  revolt  against  the  constituted  authorities,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  read  the  Riot  Act  and  disperse  her!"  Gross 
as  were  the  dimensions  of  these  monsters  of  humanity,  they 
are  all  eclipsed  by  the  fatty  fame  of  a  Russian  girl  of 
Bolschin-Grodna,  in  the  Government  of  Tula,  who,  when 
she  was  but  ten  years  old,  turned  the  scale  at  418  pounds. 
With  an  apparently  instinctive  prevision  of  her  future 


138  FAT   VS.   LEAN. 

proportions,  her  sponsors  at  her  baptism  christened  her 
Fatinitza.  Motley,  in  his  history  of  the  Dutch  Republic, 
speaks  of  an  officer  in  the  Spanish  army  in  the  Nether 
lands, —  one  Chiapin  Vitelli, —  equally  distinguished  for  his 
courage,  his  corpulence,  and  his  cruelty, —  who  had  a 
stomach  so  protuberant  that  it  was  always  supported  in 
a  bandage  suspended  from  his  neck.  Yet,  in  spite  of  this 
enormous  impediment,  he  was  personally  active  on  the 
battle-field,  and  did  more  service,  not  only  as  a  commander, 
but  as  a  subaltern,  than  many  a  younger  and  lighter  man. 
It  was  an  awful  hour  for  the  Dutch  when  he  fell  upon 
his  enemies!  Cases  like  this  must  be  regarded  as  excep 
tions  to  the  general  rule  of  leanness  in  military  heroes. 
If  Vitelli's  face  was  proportional  to  his  stomach,  he  must 
have  been  as  unpleasant  to  look  at  in  a  hot  day  as  the 
English  grazier  who  distressed  Judge  Park.  It  is  said  that 
on  a  smoking  hot  day,  at  the  assizes  in  a  country  town, 
the  grazier  planted  himself  in  front  of  the  judge,  and  sat 
there  perspiring  and  wiping  his  face  until  his  honor  could 
bear  the  sight  no  longer.  Throwing  down  his  pen,  he  called 
out:  "  Fat  man,  do  get  out  of  the  way;  you  make  one  hot 
to  look  at  you.1' 

When  the  late  Dixon  H.  Lewis,  who  weighed  360  pounds, 
represented  Alabama  in  Congress,  he  was  nominated  by 
Prentice  of  the  Louisville  Journal  for  the  Presidency  on 
the  ground  that  he  was  the  weightiest  man  in  the  House, 
and  would  fill  the  Presidential  chair  as  it  had  been  filled 
by  none  of  his  predecessors.  To  this  it  was  replied  that, 
though  he  unquestionably  overshadowed  all  his  competi 
tors,  yet  it  was  impossible  that  such  a  colossus  of  roads 
could  run  ivell  for  the  Presidency.  Even  England,  prolific 
as  she  has  been  of  great  men,  has  produced  few  leviathans 


FAT   VS.   LEAN.  139 

like  Lewis.  She  can  boast,  however,  of  one  adipose  phe 
nomenon  more  stupendous  than  even  he;  we  refer  to  Sir 
John  Potter,  who  in  1858  succeeded  Mr.  Bright  in  the 
House  of  Commons  as  the  representative  of  Manchester, 
and  who  weighed  (on  the  hay-scale,  we  suppose,)  450  pounds! 
A  London  editor,  in  speaking  of  his  face,  said  that  it  re 
minded  him  of  Milton's  description  of  Satan's  shield,  which, 
with  the  change  of  a  single  word,  is  an  admirable  picture 
of  Sir  John's  phiz: 

"The  broad  circumference 

Stands  on  his  shoulders  like  the  moon,  whose  orb 
Through  optic  glass  the  Tuscan  artist  views." 

It  is  one  of  the  preeminent  glories  of  England  that  she 
knows  how  to  utilize  her  sons  who  thus  "  tallow  in  the 
caul,"  as  we  see  in  this  case  and  in  that  of  one  Edwards, 
who  lived  long  ago  in  Oxford: 

"When  Edwards  walks  the  streets,  the  paviors  cry 
'God  bless  you,  sir!'  and  lay  their  rammers  by." 

It  is  said  that  one  wonderful  property  of  the  Krenz- 
brunnen  waters  in  Bohemia  is  their  power  to  reduce  the 
"too,  too  solid  flesh,"  and  hence  resort  to  it  hundreds  who, 
afflicted  with  excessive  bulkiness,  would  diminish  their 
burden.  "  At  one  time,"  says  a  traveler,  "  we  counted 
seventeen  fat  men  there  sitting  in  an  unbroken  row,  a 
sight  to  upset  any  unprepared  nerves ! "  It  is  fortunate 
for  such  persons  that  corpulence  is  not  treated  by  modern 
states  as  a  crime,  as  it  was  by  the  ancient  Spartans.  The 
latter,  according  to  a  late  writer,*  took  charge  of  the  firm 
ness'  and  looseness  of  men's  flesh,  and  actually  regulated 

*Bruce's  "  Historic  and  Classic  Portraits." 


140  FAT   VS.    LEAK. 

the  degree  of  fatness  to  which  it  was  lawful,  in  a  free 
state,  for  any  citizen  to  plump  out  his  body.  Those  who 
had  the  audacity  to  grow  too  fat  or  too  soft  for  military 
exercise  and  the  service  of  Sparta,  were  soundly  whipped. 
In  one  particular  instance,  that  of  Nauclis,  the  son  of 
Polytus,  the  offender  was  brought  before  the  Ephori  at  a 
meeting  of  all  the  people  of  Sparta,  at  which  his  unlaw 
ful  fatness  was  publicly  exposed;  and  he  was  threatened 
with  perpetual  banishment  if  he  did  not  bring  his  body 
within  the  regular  Spartan  compass,  and  give  up  his  cul 
pable  mode  of  living, —  which  was  declared  to  be  more 
worthy  of  an  Ionian  than  of  a  son  of  Lacedsemon. 


MEMORY  AND  ITS  MARVELS. 


OF  all  the  faculties  of  the  human  mind,  so  wonderful 
both  separately  and  in  their  combination,  there  is 
none  more  mysterious  in  its  operations  than  the  memory. 
Physiologists  tell  us  that  every  three  or  four  years  the 
particles  of  the  human  body  are  exchanged  for  new  ones, 
so  that  materially  every  man  becomes  an  entirely  differ 
ent  person  from  what  he  was;  yet,  though  his  flesh, 
bones,  muscles,  nerves,  and  blood-vessels  have  passed  away 
and  been  replaced  by  others,  the  man,  by  means  of  memory, 
preserves  his  identity  in  spite  of  these  changes.  No  wonder 
that  Cicero,  after  much  meditation  on  this  faculty,  was 
led  to  regard  it  as  one  of  the  most  cogent  proofs  of  God's 
existence  and  of  the  immateriality  of  the  soul.  Necessary 
as  this  faculty  is,  however,  to  the  preservation  of  all  our 
past  thoughts,  feelings,  and  experiences,  there  is  no  other 
mental  power  the  value  of  which  is  so  generally  under 
rated.  The  vainest  person  will  not  hesitate  to  com 
plain  of  his  wretched  memory,  however  reluctantly  he 
may  admit  that  he  is  slow-witted,  or  that  his  judgment 
is  weak,  or  his  taste  defective.  It  has  been  suggested 
that  one  cause  for  this  may  be  that  a  poor  memory  can 
not  be  concealed.  Men  may  differ  in  opinion  as  to  what 
constitutes  judgment,  imagination,  or  taste,  but  every 
body  can  detect  at  once  a  failure  to  recall  a  fact,  a  verse, 
or  a  date.  Another  cause  is  the  absurd  opinion  so  gen- 

141 


142  MEMORY   AND   ITS   MARVELS. 

erally  entertained,  that   the   more   memory  one   has,  the 
less  is  his  invention. 

A  recent  writer  says  that  "if  a  man  have  a  great 
memory, —  if  his  memory  be  prodigious  in  any  sense, — 
it  will  always  be  found  to  surpass  his  other  powers." 
This  statement  is  contradicted  by  a  hundred  biographies. 
Though  a  defective  memory  is  not,  as  Quintilian  declares, 
demonstrative  proof  of  the  lack  of  genius,  yet  nearly  all 
the  great  men  that  have  ever  lived  have  had  remarkable 
memories.  So  far  from  the  intellectual  powers  being,  as 
is  so  often  asserted,  in  inverse  proportion  to  the  strength 
and  tenacity  of  this  faculty,  the  very  reverse  is  usually 
true.  No  memory  can  be  universal,  but  just  in  propor 
tion  to  its  strength  and  many-sidedness  will  be  found 
the  vigor  of  the  other  faculties,  and  the  force  with  which 
they  can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  affairs  of  life. 
Memory  is  the  main  fountain  of  thought;  as  Burke  says, 
"  there  is  no  faculty  of  the  mind  which  can  bring  its 
energies  into  effect  unless  the  memory  be  stored  with 
ideas  for  it  to  work  upon."  Hence  it  is  that  this  faculty, 
by  a  wise  provision  of  Providence,  is  developed  in  ad 
vance  of  the  reasoning  powers,  so  that  when  the  latter 
begin  to  assert  themselves,  there  may  be  material  stored 
up  for  their  use.  What  is  an  author  without  a  good 
memory?  We  talk  of  "creative"  minds;  but  this  is  only 
a  figure  of  speech,  for  man  can  create  nothing, —  he  can 
only  select  and  combine.  Genius,  it  is  true,  lights  its 
own  fire,  but  not  till  it  has  collected  materials  to  feed 
the  flame.  When  a  man  writes  a  book,  however  original, 
he  draws  the  materials  from  his  own  recollections  and 
experiences.  Hence  the  ancients  called  Memory  the  mother 
of  the  Muses.  Tantum  ingenii,  quantum  memories.  What 


MEMORY   AKD   ITS   MARVELS.  143 

is  a  statesman  or  a  politician  without  a  great  memory? 
A  political  leader  is  continually  called  upon  for  feats  of 
memory.  Not  only  must  he  distinctly  remember  the  lead 
ing  events  of  his  country's  history  and  much  of  the  his 
tory  of  other  countries,  political,  religious,  social,  financial, 
but  he  must  have  an  exact  memory  of  names  and  dates, 
and  a  verbal  memory  to  quote  promptly  and  accurately. 
He  must  be  able  to  recall  all  the  leading  points  and 
facts  of  an  opponent's  speech,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
adhere  to  the  preconcerted  plan  of  his  own  reply;  and 
all  this  must  be  done  with  clearness  and  distinctness,  and 
without  hesitation,  boggling,  or  stammering.  The  weight 
of  Sir  Robert  Peel  as  a  speaker  was  owing  not  more  to 
his  argumentative  ability  than  to  the  extraordinary  full 
ness  and  accuracy  with  which  he  would  state  the  argu 
ments  of  his  opponents  in  the  order  of  their  succession. 

That  memory,  like  muscular  force,  may  occasionally  ex 
ist,  though  rarely,  without  being  accompanied  by  any  cor 
responding  superiority  of  the  other  faculties,  is  doubtless 
true.  There  are  men  whose  memories,  instead  of  being 
selective  and  retaining  only  what  is  nutritious  and  help 
ful, — the  things  for  which  they  have  an  intellectual  affinity, 
and  which  are  related  to  their  own  individuality  (if  they 
can  be  said  to  have  any),  retain  important  facts  and  trivi 
alities, —  things  related  and  things  unrelated  to  their  own 
personality, — with  equal  tenacity.  They  read  a  newspaper 
article,  a  poem,  or  a  story,  and  it  is  at  once  daguerreotyped 
on  the  memory.  They  go  upon  a  journey,  and  years  after 
ward  all  its  minutest  incidents  are  faithfully  treasured. 
Never  ruminating  upon  what  they  read,  they  retain  their 
knowledge  undigested  and  unassimilated,  and  it  affords  no 
more  nutriment  to  their  minds  than  the  flour  to  the  bar- 


144  MEMORY    AN"D    ITS   MARVELS. 

rel  which  contains  it.  Who  has  not  'been  bored  a  thousand 
times  by  men  with  such  memories?  Who  has  not  met 
with  encyclopedias  on  legs,  packed  full  of  learning  on  a 
great  variety  of  subjects,  but  learning  unassimilated,  with 
out  method  or  system,  and  made  up  of  information  the 
most  trivial  as  well  as  the  most  valuable  ?  Who  has  not 
listened  "  with  sad  civility  "  to  more  than  one  person  like 
the  Count  of  Coigny  described  by  Talleyrand,  who  "  pos 
sesses  wit  and  talent,  but  his  conversation  is  fatiguing, 
because  his  memory  is  equally  exact  in  quoting  the  date 
of  the  death  of  Alexander  the  Great,  and  that  of  the 
Princess  de  Gu6m£nee's  poodle?"  Lord  Bolingbroke  has 
given  a  vivid  picture  of  a  scholar  of  his  acquaintance  who 
was  an  omnivorous  reader,  and  joined  a  prodigious  memory 
of  this  kind  to  a  prodigious  industry.  "He  had  read  al 
most  constantly,"  says  Bolingbroke,  "  twelve  or  fourteen 
hours  a  day,  for-  five-and-twenty  or  thirty  years,  and  had 
heaped  together  as  much  learning  as  could  be  crowded 
into  one  head.  In  the  course  of  my  acquaintance  with  him 
I  consulted  him  once  or  twice,  not  oftener;  for  I  found 
this  mass  of  learning  of  as  little  use  to  me  as  to  the 
owner.  The  man  was  communicative  enough  ;  but  noth 
ing  was  distinct  in  his  mind.  How  could  it  be  otherwise? 
he  had  never  spared  time  to  think,  all  was  employed  in 
reading.  His  reason  had  not  the  merit  of  common  mech 
anism.  When  you  press  a  watch  or  pull  a  clock,  they  an 
swer  your  question  with  precision;  for  they  repeat  exactly 
the  hour  of  the  day,  and  tell  you  neither  more  nor  less 
than  you  desire  to  know.  But  when  you  asked  this  man  a 
question,  he  overwhelmed  you  by  pouring  forth  all  that 
the  several  terms  or  words  of  your  question  recalled  to 
his  memory;  and  if  he  omitted  anything,  it  was  that  very 


MEMORY   AND   ITS   MARVELS.  145 

thing  to  which  the  sense  of  the  whole  question  should  have 
led  him  and  confined  him.  To  ask  him  a  question  was  to 
wind  up  a  spring  in  his  memory,  that  rattled  on  with  vast 
rapidity  and  confused  noise  till  the  force  of  it  was  spent, 
and  you  went  away  with  all  the  noise  in  your  ears,  stunned 
and  uninformed.  I  never  left  him,  that  I  was  not  ready 
to  say  to  him,  Dieu  vous  fasse  la  grace  de  devenir  moins 
savant!  'God  grant  you  the  favor  of  becoming  less  learned.'  " 
Such  men,  deriving  little  nutriment  from  their  reading, 
are  never  men  of  originality  or  power.  The  great  vice 
of  our  educational  systems  to-day  is  that  in  our  schools 
and  colleges  too  high  an  estimate  is  placed  upon  a  literal 
and  formal  memory,  which  receives  only  as  boxes  and 
drawers  receive  what  is  put  into  them.  That  student  is 
too  often  regarded  as  the  best  scholar  who  has  succeeded 
best  in  cramming  for  an  examination,  or  who  has  answered 
most  correctly  the  questions  upon  the  text-books,  without 
regard  to  the  degree  in  which  he  has  assimilated  his  in 
tellectual  pabulum,  and  turned  his  knowledge  into  faculty. 
In  mastering  any  branch  of  knowledge  time  is  an  im 
portant  element.  A  period  must  elapse  sufficiently  long 
for  the  formation  of  mental  associations  between  the  newly 
acquired  information  and  that  previously  possessed,  so  that 
the  new  ideas  may  be  linked  with  the  old  by  suggesting 
chains.  No  new  knowledge  can  be  called  our  own  till  we 
have  so  meditated  upon  it,  and  turned  it  over  and  over 
in  the  mind,  that  it  not  only  is  added  to  the  old,  but  in 
terpenetrates  it,  so  that  the  old  can  scarcely  come  into  the 
"  sphere  of  consciousness  "  without  bringing  the  new  with 
it.  "  To  know  by  heart,"  says  Montaigne,  "  is  not  to  know." 
Memory  varies  largely,  not  only  in  degree,  but  in 
kind.  "  There  is  a  memory  of  the  heart,  of  the  soul,  of 
7 


146  MEMOKY    A]$"D   ITS    MARVELS. 

the  reason,  of  the  sense,1'  and  few  excel  in  each.  Some 
persons  remember  the  substance  of  what  they  read,  but 
not  the  words;  others  can  inundate  you  with  quotations, 
but  remember  little  of  their  sense.  Henry  Clay  could 
never  repeat  a  verse  of  poetry  correctly,  but  rarely  for 
got  an  argument,  or  a  name,  or  a  face.  There  is  a  cele 
brated  metaphysician  in  this  country,  who  retains  proper 
names  with  such  difficulty  that  it  is  said  that  if  he  has 
a  speech  to  make  in  which  they  occur,  he  is  obliged  to 
write  them  on  a  slip  of  paper,  and  carry  it  in  his  vest 
pocket  for  reference  while  he  is  making  his  harangue. 
Great  lawyers  recollect  principles  only;  exact  lawyers 
recollect  cases,  and  can  repeat  decisions  by  the  hour  in 
the  very  words  of  the  books.  The  former  make  the  best 
advocates,  the  latter  the  best  judges.  One  man  will  re 
member  distinctly  combinations  of  sounds,  but  not  of 
colors;  another  will  remember  figures  and  dates,  but  not 
principles,  arguments,  and  reasons.  There  are  hotel  clerks 
who,  with  poor  memories  of  other  things,  recognize  in 
stantly  the  features  of  any  guest  they  have  once  seen.  It 
was  said  of  Addison's  daughter,  who  died  in  1797,  that 
"  she  inherited  her  father's  memory,  but  none  of  the  dis 
criminating  powers  of  his  understanding;  with  the  re 
tentive  powers  of  Jedediah  Buxton,  she  was  incapable  of 
speaking  or  writing  an  intelligible  sentence."  Dr.  Ley- 
den,  the  friend  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  could  repeat  an  Act 
of  Parliament  after  one  perusal;  but  he  had  no  power  of 
analysis,  and  could  recover  a  passage  or  sentence  only  by 
going  back  to  the  beginning. 

Say,  in  the  introduction  to  his  "  Political  Economy," 
tells  us  that  he  studied  all  the  books  he  could  find  relat 
ing  to  his  theme,  and  then  took  time  to  forget  what  he 


MEMORY   AND   ITS   MARVELS.  147 

had  read,  before  beginning  to  write.  The  practice  of  Say 
suggests  the  question  whether  one  thoroughly  compre 
hends  what  his  memory  retains  in  the  gross.  Are  facts 
ever  properly  generalized,  digested,  and  assimilated, — 
made  part  and  parcel  of  the  mind, —  incorporated  chem 
ically,  not  by  contact,  but  by  solution, —  till  they  are,  in 
a  great  degree,  forgotten?  No  invariable  rule  can  be 
laid  down  on  this  subject,  for  though  generally  those 
who  can  repeat  with  perfect  accuracy  the  language  of 
what  they  read  are  apt  to  forget  the  substance,  yet  there 
are  many  striking  instances  to  the  contrary.  Mark  Patti- 
son,  in  his  life  of  Milton,  says  that  he  could  repeat  Homer 
almost  all  without  book,  and  then  strangely  adds  that 
Milton's  "  was  not  a  verbal  memory,"  and  that  "  psycho 
logically  the  power  of  imagination  and  the  power  of  verbal 
memory  are  almost  always  found  in  inverse  proportion." 
If  Milton  could  almost  repeat  Homer  by  heart,  it  is  hard 
to  see  how  he  could  do  it  without  an  exceedingly  tena 
cious  verbal  memory;  and  it  is  equally  hard  to  see  what 
antagonism  there  can  be  between  verbal  memory  and  im 
agination.  Alike  in  literature  and  in  art  memory  is  the 
very  life-blood  of  the  imagination,  which  droops  and  dies 
when  the  veins  are  empty.  As  Sir  Joshua  Eeynolds  has 
Said:  "Genius  may  anticipate  the  season  of  maturity; 
but,  in  the  education  of  a  people,  as  in  that  of  an  indi 
vidual,  memory  must  be  exercised  before  the  powers  of 
reason  and  fancy  can  be  expanded;  nor  may  the  artist 
hope  to  equal  or  surpass,  till  he  has  learned  to  imitate, 
the  works  of  his  predecessors."  It  is  impossible,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  for  a  man  to  be  a  great  writer  or 
speaker  without  a  great  memory;  and  it  must  have,  be 
sides  other  qualities,  that  of  being  a  verbal  one.  Hun- 


148  MEMORY   AND   ITS   MARVELS. 

dreds  of  passages  in  Milton's  poems  are  paraphrases  or 
literal  translations  of  passages  in  the  Greek  and  Latin 
poets,  and  his  English  words  are  often  used  in  the  sense 
of  the  classic  words  from  which  they  are  derived.  His 
wealth  of  allusion,  the  passages  in  Paradise  Lost  which 
are  little  more  than  a  muster-roll  of  celebrated  names,  and 
his  diction,  which  Mr.  Pattison  says  is  the  elaborated  out 
come  of  the  best  words  of  all  antecedent  poetry, —  all 
contradict  the  idea  that  Milton  had  not  a  verbal  memory. 
Probably,  as  a  late  critic  has  suggested,  Milton's  memory 
of  words  was  as  strong  as  Magliabecchi's;  but  he  had 
faculties  in  addition,  which  the  bookworm  had  not.  A 
verbal  memory,  when  the  memory  is  not  merely  verbal, 
is  a  valuable  gift.  The  power  of  repeating  long  passages 
of  prose,  or  beautiful  lines  of  verse  whose  cadence  de 
lights  the  ear,  is  not  only  a  pleasant  social  feat  of  memory, 
but  is  a  source  of  amusement  in  the  intervals  of  care,  in 
solitude,  or  in  making  journeys,  and  is  a  help  to  a  young 
writer  in  forming  his  style.  It  is  a  pity  that  such  selec 
tions  are  so  rarely  committed  to  memory  in  these  days. 
If  judiciously  made,  they  may  become,  as  Euskin  says, 
"  fairy  palaces  of  beautiful  thoughts,  bright  fancies,  satis- 
"fied  memories,  noble  histories,  faithful  sayings,  treasure- 
houses  of  precious  and  restful  thoughts  which  care  can 
not  disturb,  nor  pain  make  gloomy,  nor  poverty  take 
away  from  us, —  houses  built  without  hands,  for  our  souls 
to  dwell  in."  It  has  been  justly  said  that  an  appropriate 
prose  quotation,  led  up  to  by  chance,  is  a  pleasant  sur 
prise  that  one  does  not  forget.  "  The  more  ordinary  feat 
of  this  memory,"  says  an  English  essayist,  "  is  that  of 
retaining  the  exact  words,  whether  spoken  or  written,  of 
what  has  been  neatly  or  pungently  expressed.  A  good 


MEMORY    AND    ITS    MARVELS.  149 

deal  of  something  very  like  wit  itself  lies  in  an  apt  ver 
batim  reproduction  of  the  wit  and  humor  of  other  men." 

We  speak  sometimes  of  the  caprices  of  memory,  which 
is  only  another  term  for  our  ignorance  of  its  laws.  There 
is  no  other  faculty  of  the  mind  which  is  so  inexplicable 
in  its  operations.  Why  the  most  vivid  impressions  should 
be  so  utterly  obliterated,  and  then,  as  if  by  an  enchanter's 
wand,  spring  suddenly  to  light,  is  a  mystery  which  baffles 
the  attempts  of  the  acutest  metaphysicians  to  explain  it. 
Who  has  not  again  and  again  been  vexed  by  forgetting  a 
perfectly  familiar  quotation,  fact,  or  name,  and  afterward 
found  it  flash  upon  him  in  the  most  unexpected  way,  when 
he  was  thinking  of  something  altogether  different?  How 
often,  after  having  been  silenced  by  Jones  or  Brown  in  con 
troversy,  do  we  recall  a  few  minutes  too  late  that  fact  or 
argument  which  would  have  pulverized  him!  How  many 
persons,  like  Artemas  Ward,  have  the  gift  of  oratory,  but 
"  haven't  it  about  them  "  when  it  is  wanted!  Charles  James 
Fox  was  once  carving  at  a  dinner  party  on  the  Continent, 
when  he  suddenly  startled  the  company  by  crying  out 
"Gorcum!  Gorcum!"  It  was  the  name  of  a  town  which 
he  could  not  recollect  in  conversation  an  hour  before.  So 
familiar  is  this  phenomenon, —  so  often  has  the  missing 
idea,  for  which  we  racked  our  brains  in  vain,  come  back 
all  at  once  into  the  mind,  "delivered  like  a  prepaid  par 
cel  laid  at  the  door  of  consciousness," — that  we  are  accus 
tomed  in  similar  straits  to  say:  "Never  mind,  the  missing 
name  (or  whatever  else  we  wish  to  recall)  will  come  to 
me  by  and  by";  and,  as  Miss  F.  P.  Cobbe  says,  "we  de 
liberately  turn  away,  not  intending  finally  to  abandon  the 
pursuit,  but  precisely  as  if  we  were  possessed  of  an  obe 
dient  secretary  or  librarian,  whom  we  could  order  to  hunt 


150  MEMORY   AKD   ITS   MARVELS. 

up  a  missing  document  or  turn  out  a  word  in  a  dictionary, 
while  we  amused  ourselves  with  something  else.1'  It  is 
probable  that  no  impression  made  upon  the  mind,  at  least 
no  deep  impression,  ever  wholly  dies.  The  brain  is  a  pa 
limpsest,  on  which,  though  new  impressions  are  written 
over  old  ones  imperfectly  rubbed  out,  the  effaced  writing 
may  at  any  time  reappear. 

It  is  a  blessed  provision  of  this  thesaurus  omnium  rerum, 
as  Cicero  calls  it,  that  the  memory  treasures  pleasing  im 
pressions  more  easily  than  those  that  are  painful;  that  it 
preserves  the  roses  of  life,  and  casts  away  the  thorns.  The 
happy  events  of  our  lives,  beautiful  scenery  we  have  gazed 
upon,  exquisite  music  to  which  we  have  listened,  hours  of 
delicious  converse  with  friends,  we  can  recall  with  more 
or  less  vividness;  but  of  bodily  pain,  or  the  vexations  and 
perplexities  of  life,  however  keenly  we  suffered  at  the  time, 
we  have  only  a  general  and  hazy  remembrance.  Great 
calamities,  especially,  seem  to  have  a  stunning  effect  upon 
the  mind,  so  that  the  impressions  they  make  are  blunted, 
and  cannot  be  accurately  remembered.  Old  men,  who  re 
call  with  keen  delight  the  games  and  pranks  of  their  school 
boy  days,  appear  to  have  almost  forgotten  how  irksome 
they  found  the  drudgery  of  learning,  how  they  rebelled 
against  the  restraints  imposed  upon  their  liberty,  and  how 
much  they  suffered  from  the  bullies  of  the  school. 

Among  the  curious  phenomena  of  memory  one  of  the 
most  striking  is  its  connection  with  isolated  impressions 
on  particular  senses.  M.  Hue,  the  traveler,  says  that  if  he 
were  dropped  from  the  clouds  with  his  eyes  bandaged,  and 
fell  in  any  part  of  China,  he  should  instantly  know  it  by 
the  smell.  We  have  read  of  an  Englishman  who  said  that 
nothing  brought  his  childhood  before  him  so  vividly  as  the 


MEMORY   AtfD   ITS    MARVELS.  151 

smell  of  the  London  mud,  which  used  to  come  in  the  windows 
of  his  father's  house  when  the  crossing-sweepers  cleaned 
the  street,  and  collected  the  mud  in  the  neighboring  gut 
ter.  These  facts  enable  us  to  form  some  idea  of  the  way 
in  which  dogs  and  horses  identify  each  other  by  means  of 
their  noses.  Still  more  remarkable  than  these  phenomena 
are  the  effects  produced  upon  the  memory  by  injuries  to 
the  brain.  Many  instances  are  recorded  of  persons  who, 
in  consequence  of  severe  hurts  on  the  head,  have  lost  all 
their  mental  acquisitions,  and  been  compelled  to  learn  the 
alphabet  again,  like  children.  By  a  fall  from  his  horse  an 
Englishman  lost  his  knowledge  of  Greek,  but  retained 
his  other  acquirements;  in  like  manner  a  young  man  in 
northern  New  York,  being  kicked  over  the  left  eye  by  a 
horse,  forgot  all  his  attainments  in  Latin.  Dr.  Carpenter, 
in  his  "  Mental  Physiology^"  gives  an  account  of  a  dissent 
ing  minister  in  England,  who  preached  on  a  Sunday  the 
same  sermon  which  he  had  preached  in  the  same  pulpit 
on  the  Sunday  before.  He  also  gave  out  the  same  hymn, 
read  the  same  lessons,  and  directed  his  extempore  prayer  in 
the  same  channel.  When  he  came  down  from  the  pulpit, 
it  was  found  that  he  had  not  the  slightest  remembrance 
of  having  gone  through  the  same  service  on  the  previous 
Sunday.  A  writer  in  the  "  Bibliotheca  Sacra'1  tells  of  an 
author  who  wrote  a  work  in  defense  of  a  theory,  and  twenty 
years  after  wrote  a  treatise  in  opposition  to  it,  citing  and 
refuting  its  arguments  in  succession,  forgetting  all  the 
while  that  he  was  the  original  author  to  whom  he  had 
become  the  antagonist.  Dr.  Broussonnet,  a  European, 
found,  after  recovery  from  an  attack  of  apoplexy,  that  he 
had  utterly  lost  the  ability  to  write  or  pronounce  proper 
names,  or  any  substantive,  though  his  memory  abounded 


152  MEMORY    AND    ITS   MARVELS. 

in  adjectives.  In  speaking  of  any  person,  he  designated 
him  by  calling  him  "  red  "  or  "  tall,"  according  to  the 
color  of  his  hair  or  his  stature.  There  have  been  persons 
who,  after  some  injury  to  the  brain,  could  recollect  only 
the  first  syllable  of  the  words  they  used;  others  have  con 
founded  different  substantives,  calling  a  watch  a  hat,  and 
coals  paper.  Sometimes  a  person  may  be  able  to  spell  his 
wants,  though  he  cannot  speak  the  word,  asking  (for  ex 
ample)  for  b,  r,  e,  a,  d.  There  is  an  account  given  of  a 
British  captain  who,  whilst  giving  orders  on  the  quarter 
deck  of  his  ship  at  the  battle  of  the  Nile,  was  struck  on 
the  head  by  a  shot,  and  immediately  became  senseless.  For 
fifteen  months  after  his  removal  to  Greenwich  Hospital  he 
showed  no  sign  of  intelligence.  He  was  then  trephined, 
when  consciousness  at  once  returned,  and  he  immediately 
began  busying  himself  to  see  the  orders  executed  which 
he  had  given  during  the  battle  fifteen  months  ago.  The  clock 
work  of  the  brain,  unaware  that  it  had  stopped,  pointed, 
when  set  going  again,  to  the  exact  minute  it  had  last 
marked.  These  sudden  revivals  of  a  lost  intelligence,  it 
has  been  happily  said,  "almost  rival  in  their  dramatic  effect 
the  result  of  the  prince's  advent  in  the  palace  of  the  '  Sleep 
ing  Beauty,'  where,  at  the  magic  of  a  kiss,  the  inmates  of 
the  royal  household,  who  had  gone  to  sleep  for  a  hundred 
years,  transfixed  in  their  old  attitudes,  leaped  suddenly 
into  life  and  motion,  as  though  they  had  only  for  a  moment 
slept." 

A  celebrated  woman,  to  whom  one  proposed  to  teach 
an  art  of  memory,  replied:  "  I  should  rather  learn  the 
art  of  forgetting."  Those  who  deplore  the  feebleness  of 
their  memories  little  dream  of  the  heavy  penalty  which 
the  man  with  a  tenacious  memory  pays  for  his  gift.  What 


MEMORY   AND   ITS   MARVELS.  153 

greater  affliction  could  befall  us  than  to  remember  every 
thing  that  we  have  seen,  learned,  or  felt,  with  the  utmost 
vividness  and  distinctness?  Who  would  like  to  treasure 
up  all  the  foolish  things  he  had  ever  read  or  heard,  along 
with  the  wrise  and  suggestive  ones?  Who  would  willingly 
be  cursed  with  a  recollection  of  all  the  stupid  or  wicked 
things  he  had  himself  done,  or  of  all  the  envious  and 
spiteful  sayings  and  the  shabby  acts  of  which  he  had 
been  the  victim?  What  if  we  could  recall  all  the  morti 
fications  and  humiliations  of  our  boyhood;  all  the  nausea 
of  a  long  sea-sickness;  all  the  excruciating  aches  and  pains 
of  a  rheumatic  attack;  all  the  horror  we  felt  when  on 
the  verge  of  bankruptcy;  all  the  anguish  inflicted  by  every 
misunderstanding  with  those  who  were  dear  to  us;  all 
the  torture  we  suffered  from  a  malignant  newspaper  libel? 
There  are  memories  that  are  too  morbidly  retentive  of 
the  past;  memories  which  haunt  like  a  ghost,  and  keep 
perpetually  before  their  possessors  the  ugly  and  disagree 
able  things  which  they  would  bury  in  oblivion.  Again, 
forgetting  has  so  much  to  do  with  forgiving-,  that  in  pro 
portion  as  a  man  is  blessed  (or,  in  this  case,  cursed)  with 
a  tenacious  memory,  he  finds  it  harder  to  obey  the  scrip 
tural  precept.  Men  of  feeble  memories  have  no  concep 
tion  of  the  clearness  and  intensity  with  which  an  old- 
time  injury  comes  back  to  the  mind  and  soul  of  a  man 
of  potent  memory.  An  insult  is  recalled  so  vividly  that 
he  flames  up  at  the  recollection  as  fiercely  as  he  did  at 
its  reception. 

The  necessity  of  memory  to  the  scholar  is  obvious,  but 
the  value  of  its  negative  or  rejecting  power  is  not  so 
well  appreciated.  The  finest  intellects  are  not  more  re 
markable  for  the  readiness  with  which  they  unconsciously 


154  MEMOKY   AND   ITS   MAEVELS. 

select  what  is  their  proper  mental  food,  than  for  the  ease 
with  which  they  resist  and  throw  off  what  has  no  rela 
tion  to  their  work  or  life.  Their  memories,  like  magnets 
stirring  in  sand  that  is  mingled  with  steel-filings,  draw 
to  them  only  that  for  which  they  have  an  affinity.  Ham- 
merton,  the  author  of  "  The  Intellectual  Life,"  writing 
to  a  student  who  lamented  his  defective  memory,  says: 
"  So  far  from  writing,  as  you  seem  to  expect  me  to  do, 
a  letter  of  condolence  on  the  subject  of  what  you  are 
pleased  to  call  your  *  miserable  memory/  I  feel  disposed 
rather  to  indite  a  letter  of  congratulation.  It  is  possible 
that  you  may  be  blessed  with  a  selecting  memory,  which 
is  not  only  useful  for  what  it  retains,  but  for  what  it 
rejects."  He  then  cites  the  case  of  Goethe,  whose  passion 
ate  studies  in  many  different  directions,  always  in  obedi 
ence  to  the  predominant  interests  of  the  moment,  he  re 
gards  as  the  best  example  of  the  way  in  which  a  great 
intellect,  with  rare  powers  of  acquisition  and  liberty  to 
grow  in  free  luxuriance,  sends  its  roots  into  various  soils, 
and  draws  from  them  the  constituents  of  its  sap.  As 
a  university  or  law  student,  he  was  not  of  the  type  which 
parents  and  professors  consider  satisfactory;  but  his  wealth 
of  mind  was  probably  due  to  the  liberty  of  browsing 
freely  at  will  in  all  the  fields  of  literature,  according  to 
the  maxim  of  French  law,  chacun  prend  son  Uen  ou  il  le 
trouve;  and  had  he  been  bound  down  to  legal  studies  ex 
clusively,  no  one,  it  is  likely,  would  ever  have  suspected 
his  immense  faculty  of  assimilation.  What  are  called  bad 
memories,  Mr.  Hammerton  continues,  are  often  the  best; 
they  are  often  the  selecting  memories.  They  seldom  win 
distinctions  in  examinations,  but  in  literature  and  art. 
"A  good  literary  memory  is  not  like  a  post-office,  that 


MEMOKY   AND   ITS   MARVELS.  155 

takes  in  everything;  but  like  a  well-edited  periodical, 
which  prints  nothing  that  does  not  harmonize  with  its 
intellectual  purpose.  A  well-known  author  gave  me  this 
piece  of  advice:  'What  you  remember  is  what  you  ought 
to  write,  and  you  ought  to  give  things  exactly  the  degree 
of  relative  importance  that  they  have  in  your  memory. 
If  you  forget  much,  it  will  only  save  beforehand  the  labor 
of  erasure.1  "  Sydney  Smith  said  that  he  saw  no  more 
reason  why  he  should  remember  all  the  books  that  had 
made  him  learned,  than  that  he  should  remember  all  the 
dinners  that  had  made  him  fat. 

Great  memories  in  our  day  are  so  rare  that  many  of 
the  well  authenticated  facts  related  concerning  the  feats 
of  this  faculty  almost  stagger  belief.  Many  persons,  be 
cause  they  have  overtaxed  the  brain,  and  enfeebled  it  by 
dissipation,  by  the  use  of  tobacco,  opium  and  alcohol, —  above 
all,  by  feeding  it  exclusively  with  novels,  daily  newspapers, 
and  literary  slop  generally, —  doubt  the  stories  told  of  the 
astonishing  strength  and  tenacity  of  other  men's  memories. 
It  has  been  justly  said  that  there  is  in  most  minds  a  stand 
ing  guard  to  resist  the  entrance  of  knowledge  into  the 
brain, —  vacancy,  indifference,  impatience,  wool-gathering, 
narrowness  of  interests,  absorption  in  self;  and  it  is  hard 
for  the  possessors  of  such  minds,  knowing  their  own  empti 
ness,  to  believe  that  other  men  are  full  of  information  to 
overflowing.  The  memories  of  some  of  the  famous  men 
of  antiquity,  especially,  seem  miraculous  to  a  person 
whose  own  treacherous  memory,  like  a  bag  with  holes, 
lets  everything  slip  through  that  he  puts  into  it.  Books, 
which  are  a  kind  of  artificial  memory,  impair  the  recol 
lection  of  many  of  the  moderns.  Having  few  such  store 
houses  of  knowledge,  the  ancients  were  compelled  to  carry 


156  MEMORY   AKD   ITS   MARVELS. 

all  their  intellectual  treasures  in  their  heads.  Men  found 
no  difficulty  in  remembering  the  twenty-four  books  of 
Homer,  before  the  art  of  writing  was  invented.  Cyrus 
knew  the  name  of  every  soldier  in  his  army.  Themistocles 
could  call  the  name  of  every  one  of  the  twenty  thousand 
citizens  of  Athens.  Seneca  could  repeat  two  thousand 
proper  names  in  the  order  in  which  they  had  been  told 
him,  and  could  recite  two  hundred  verses  read  to  him  for 
the  first  time  by  as  many  different  persons.  He  tells  us 
that  the  Emperor  Hadrian  could  repeat  two  thousand 
words  in  the  order  he  heard  them.  Cinna,  the  plenipo 
tentiary  sent  by  Pyrrhus  to  the  Roman  Senate,  having 
been  entertained  at  a  banquet  at  which  all  the  leading 
senators  were  present,  addressed  every  one  of  them  at 
their  session  the  next  morning  accurately  by  name. 

Prodigious  as  are  these  feats,  they  have  been  paralleled 
within  the  last  three  or  four  centuries.  Scaliger  could 
repeat  a  hundred  lines  after  one  reading.  M.  Angelo  had 
on  his  lips  the  greater  part  of  the  poetry  of  Dante  and 
Petrarch;  and  so  had  Galileo  of  Ariosto,  Petrarch  and 
Berni.  Justus  Leipsius  had  all  Tacitus  by  heart,  and 
pledged  himself  to  repeat,  word  by  word,  any  passage 
called  for,  allowing  at  the  same  time  a  dagger  to  be 
thrust  into  his  body  if  he  made  a  single  trip  or  false 
repetition.  Locke  says  that  that  "  prodigy  of  parts,"  Pascal, 
knew  the  whole  Bible  by  heart.  He  forgot  nothing  of 
what  he  had  done,  read,  or  thought  in  any  part  of  his 
rational  life.  Magliabecchi,  the  Florentine  librarian,  had 
so  portentous  a  memory  that  his  head  was  called  a  "  uni 
versal  index,  both  of  titles  and  matter."  A  gentleman 
who  had  lent  him  a  manuscript,  came  to  him  one  day 
after  it  had  been  returned,  and  pretending  to  have  lost  it, 


MEMORY   AND   ITS   MARVELS.  157 

desired  him  to  repeat  of  it  as  much  as  he  could.  Maglia- 
becchi  soon  after  wrote  out  the  whole  manuscript,  with 
out  missing  a  word,  or  even  varying  from  the  spelling. 
So  tenacious  and  exact  was  his  recollection,  that  he  could 
tell  where  every  important  book  stood  in  the  great  col 
lections  of  different  countries.  He  studied  libraries  as 
generals  study  the  field  in  which  they  are  to  campaign. 
One  day  the  Grand  Duke  sent  to  ask  whether  he  could 
get  a  book  that  was  particularly  scarce,  marked  with  four 
Rs,  rarissimiis,  as  Dominie  Sampson  would  say.  "  No, 
sir,"  promptly  replied  the  monster  of  memory;  "it  is  im 
possible.  Your  Highnesses  treasury  would  not  buy  it  for 
you;  for  there  is  but  one  in  the  world  —  that  is  in  the 
Grand  Signor's  library  at  Constantinople,  and  is  the 
seventh  book  on  the  second  shelf,  on  the  right  hand  side 
as  you  go  in." 

Leibnitz,  even  when  old,  could  repeat  nearly  all  the 
poetry  of  Virgil,  word  by  word.  Saunderson  knew  by 
heart  the  Odes  of  Horace,  Cicero's  "  Offices,"  and  a  large 
part  of  Juvenal  and  Persius.  Jeremy  Taylor,  who  was 
a  living  library,  wrote  his  "  Liberty  of  Prophesying  "  with 
out  access  to  books;  and  Pope  tells  us  that  his  friend 
Bolingbroke  could  write  on  a  particular  subject,  away 
from  his  books,  as  well  as  if  he  had  them  all  about  him. 
An  amusing  story  is  told  of  an  English  gentleman,  whom 
Frederick  the  Great  placed  behind  a  screen,  when  Voltaire 
came  to  read  him  a  manuscript  poem  of  considerable 
length.  The  eavesdropper  afterward  tormented  the  poet 
by  asserting  that  the  poem  was  his,  and  proved  the  claim 
by  repeating  it  word  for  word.  It  is  related  of  a  cele 
brated  reporter  for  a  London  morning  newspaper,  that 
he  took  no  notes  whatever;  and  yet  if  an  unexpected 


158  MEMORY    AND    ITS   MARVELS. 

debate  sprang  up,  and  lie  was  left  for  hours  without  any 
one  to  relieve  him,  he  would  write  out  the  whole  verba 
tim.  While  listening,  he  used  to  close  his  eyes,  and  lean 
with  both  hands  upon  his  stick;  and  in  this  attitude  was 
literally  "  held  by  the  ear,"  so  as  to  be  incapable  of 
thought,  and  almost  of  the  use  of  all  his  other  senses. 
Even  a  fortnight  after  a  debate  had  occurred,  and  during 
the  intervention  of  other  discussions,  he  would  still  retain 
a  full  recollection  of  the  former, —  saying  he  had  put  it 
by  in  a  corner  of  his  mind  for  future  reference.  Bishop 
Jewell,  who  died  in  1571,  could  repeat  exactly  anything 
he  had  written,  after  one  perusal.  While  the  church  bell 
was  ringing  for  worship,  he  would  commit  a  whole  ser 
mon,  and  repeat  it  verbatim.  He  could  repeat  forward 
and  backward  a  long  string  of  Welsh,  Irish,  foreign  and 
barbarous  words,  after  one  or  two  hearings. 

Great  linguists  have  always  been  noted  for  their  power 
both  of  retention  and  reproduction.  Person  declared  that 
he  could  repeat  Smollett's  "  Roderick  Random "  from  be 
ginning  to  end,  and  that  he  would  undertake  to  learn  by 
heart  a  copy  of  the  London  "Morning  Chronicle"  in  a  week. 
One  day  he  called  upon  a  friend  who  chanced  to  be  read 
ing  Thucydides,  and  who  asked  him  the  meaning  of  a 
certain  word.  Porson,  on  hearing  the  word,  did  not  look 
at  the  book,  but  at  once  repeated  the  passage.  His  friend 
asked  how  he  knew  that  the  word  was  in  that  passage. 
"  Because,"  replied  the  great  linguist,  "  the  word  occurs 
only  twice  in  Thucydides;  once  on  the  right-hand  page 
in  your  edition,  and  once  on  the  left.  I  observed  on 
which  side  you  looked,  and  accordingly  knew  to  which 
passage  you  referred."  Ignatius  de  Rossi,  the  Italian 
prodigy  of  learning,  surpassed  even  Porson  in  mnemonic 


MEMORY   AND   ITS   MARVELS.  159 

performances.  Canon  Lattanzi,  his  colleague  in  educa 
tional  labor,  related  to  the  late  Cardinal  Wiseman  an 
anecdote  of  De  Rossi's  great  memory.  Spending  a  little 
time  with  the  Canon  in  villeggiatura  at  Tivoli,  De  Eossi  said 
that  if  any  one  would  repeat  a  line  from  any  of  the  four 
great  poets  of  Italy,  he  would  follow  it  by  reciting  a 
hundred  lines  in  due  order  of  connection.  The  trial  was 
made,  and,  to  the  astonishment  of  every  one,  he  was  en 
tirely  successful.  The  query  was  then  raised  as  to  his 
ability  to  perform  the  same  feat  in  the  Latin  classics.  "  It 
is  twenty  years,"  he  replied,  "  since  I  read  the  Italian 
poets,  and  then  it  was  only  for  amusement;  of  the  Latin 
classics  I  have  been  professor,  so  you  had  better  not  try 
me."  In  the  "  Edinburgh  Review,"  some  }rears  ago,  it  was 
stated  that  Xavier,  the  great  Jesuit  missionary,  acquired 
one  of  the  Indian  languages  sufficiently  to  qualify  himself 
for  his  missionary  duties,  in  three  months.  The  Abbe 
Poule,  BufFon  and  Byron  knew  all  their  own  works  by 
heart.  Cuvier's  memory  was  enormous.  It  was  a  vast 
mirror  of  knowledge,  embracing  at  once  the  grandest 
and  minutest  facts  in  natural  science.  He  died,  he  said, 
with  three  books  in  his  head, —  the  materials  all  ready 
and  arranged,  but  not  written  down. 

Mathews,  the  elder  of  the  two  famous  comedians,  was 
so  familiar  with  his  plays  that  he  sometimes  stepped  aside 
as  the  curtain  drew  up,  to  ascertain  the  name  of  the 
piece  advertised  for  the  evening,  and  that,  too,  when  he 
was  tormented  with  cracks  on  the  tongue,  and  uttered 
with  the  keenest  pain  what  his  audience  so  delighted  to 
hear.  Sir  Walter  Scott  often  astonished  his  friends  by 
the  vice-like  grip  of  his  memory.  The  Ettrick  Shepherd 
says  that  when  Scott  once  desired  him  to  sing  one  of  his 


160  MEMORY    AND    ITS    MARVELS. 

(Hogg's)  imprinted  ballads,  which  the  "  Wizard  of  the 
North  "  had  heard  but  once,  and  that  three  years  before, 
he  stuck  fast  at  the  eighth  verse,  upon  which  Scott  began 
the  ballad  again,  and  recited  every  word  from  begin 
ning  to  end.  The  ballad  consisted  of  eighty-eight  stanzas! 
Many  cases  have  been  known  of  very  illiterate  persons 
with  extraordinary  verbal  memories,  some  of  whom  could 
repeat  the  whole  Bible  from  end  to  end  with  hardly  a 
mistake.  Professor  Lawson,  of  England,  sometimes  ex 
amined  his  classes  in  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  Scriptures, 
without  a  book  before  him;  and  he  once  declared  that, 
if  the  Bible  were  lost,  he  could,  with  the  exception  of  a 
few  chapters  in  the  Old  Testament,  restore  it  all.  It  is 
said  that  after  he  had  perused  the  sermons  of  Ralph  Ers- 
kine,  he  could  repeat  them  almost  entirely.  A  friend  one 
day,  in  a  conversation  with  him,  cited  certain  opinions  of 
Gibbon.  "Stop!"  cried  Lawson  again  and  again,  "that 
is  not  Gibbon's  view  at  all" ;  and  thereupon  he  proceeded 
to  quote  the  identical  words  of  the  great  historian  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  though  he  had  not  read  them  for  over 
thirty  years.  A  simple  perusal  of  one  of  his  sermons 
stamped  it  indelibly  on  his  brain,  so  that  he  could  repeat 
it  in  the  pulpit. 

No  class  of  men  are  more  celebrated  for  feats  of  memory 
than  actors.  Their  memoriter  training  tends  to  the  strength 
ening  of  the  faculty  to  an  almost  incredible  degree.  It  is 
said  that  Cooke  could  commit  to  memory  the  contents  of 
a  daily  newspaper  in  eight  hours.  William  Lyon,  an  itiner 
ant  actor  in  Edinburgh,  won  about  a  hundred  years  ago 
a  wager  of  a  crown  bowl  of  punch,  by  one  of  the  most 
superhuman  feats  of  memory  on  record.  He  bet  that  on 
the  next  day  at  rehearsal  he  would  repeat  the  whole  of  a 


MEMORY    AtfD   ITS   MARVELS.  161 

"Daily  Advertiser";  and,  though  drunk  the  night  before, 
accomplished  the  feat.  How  any  human  being  could  do 
this,  considering  the  want  of  connection  in  the  articles,  the 
variety  of  the  advertisements,  and  the  general  chaos  which 
often  reigns  in  a  daily  paper,  must  ever  remain  to  com 
mon  mortals  an  inscrutable  mystery.  The  extraordinary 
powers  of  calculation,  depending  entirely  upon  memory, 
which  some  men  have  possessed,  are  among  the  most  sur 
prising  facts  in  the  history  of  this  faculty.  The  mathema 
tician  Wallis,  in  bed  and  in  the  dark,  extracted  the  cube 
root  from  a  number  consisting  of  thirty  figures.  Jedediah 
Buxton,  an  illiterate  peasant,  could  tramp  over  a  piece  of 
land,  and  tells  its  contents  in  square  feet  or  inches  with 
as  much  exactness  as  if  he  had  measured  it  with  a  chain. 
Being  asked  suddenly  in  a  field  how  many  cubical  eighths 
of  an  inch  there  are  in  a  triangular  body  whose  three 
sides  are,  respectively,  23,145,789  yards,  5,642,732  yards, 
and  54,965  yards,  he  gave  the  exact  solution  from  his  head 
in  five  hours.  Lawyers  with  a  large  practice  often  exhibit 
marvelous  memories.  Lord  Lyndhurst,  in  the  famous  case 
of  Small  vs.  At  wood,  delivered  a  judgment  which  lasted  for 
many  hours,  and  dealt  with  an  incredible  number  of  in 
tricate  facts,  without  once  looking  at  a  note. 

One  of  the  most  mysterious  and  striking,  yet  indisputa 
ble  facts  of  the  memory,  is  its  tendency,  when  very  power 
ful,  to  absorb  thought,  and  even  language,  unconsciously. 
Ideas  and  words  that  vividly  impress  it,  photograph  them 
selves  upon  it  forever.  Many  striking  examples  of  this 
are  well  authenticated.  Some  years  ago  a  Universalist 
minister  in  Massachusetts  preached  one  Sunday  afternoon, 
in  exchange  with  a  brother  clergyman,  a  sermon  which  he 

was  thunderstruck  to  learn  had  been  preached  in  the  fore- 

7* 


162  MEMORY    AND    ITS    MAEVELS. 

noon  by  another  speaker.  It  turned  out,  on  inquiry,  that 
the  latter  had  gathered  it  from  the  lips  of  the  supposed 
plagiarist  at  church,  a  few  weeks  before.  The  Boston 
"  Congregationalist "  states  that  some  years  ago  two  articles 
appeared  in  an  eastern  magazine  which  were  found  to  be 
only  repetitions,  even  to  the  ipsissima  verba,  of  certain 
essays  already  printed.  The  articles  had  been  contributed 
by  students  who  were  regarded  as  the  best  writers  in  col 
lege,  and,  strange  to  say,  of  unimpeachable  integrity.  When 
told  of  the  coincidence,  they  were  as  utterly  astounded  as 
their  friends  at  the  seeming  theft,  and  warmly  asserted 
their  innocence.  They  denied  all  intention  of  plagiarism. 
As  they  were  young  men  of  exact  scholarship,  trained  to 
great  feats  of  memory,  it  is  beyond  a  doubt,  as  the  writer 
in  the  "  Congregationalist "  says,  that  having  read  up  care 
fully  on  the  subjects  on  which  they  were  about  to  write, 
instead  of  digesting  and  assimilating  their  borrowed  ma 
terials,  they  had  unconsciously  appropriated  them  word  for 
word.  Facts  like  these  should  make  the  critics  of  the 
daily  press  a  little  more  charitable  when  they  are  disposed 
to  leap  to  the  conclusion  that  all  literary  parallelisms  and 
coincidences  are  necessarily  proofs  of  plagiarism,  and  to 
rush  into  print  with  the  cry  of  "Stop  Thief!"  whenever 
a  writer  or  speaker  who  has  read,  not  to  steal  the  thoughts 
of  others,  but  to  refresh  his  own  exhausted  mind,  has  un 
consciously  appropriated  the  thought  or  language,  princi 
ples  or  passages,  of  another.  Often  a  writer  fancies  his 
ideas  to  be  original  because  he  cannot  recollect  their 
sources. 

It  is  said  that  Ben  Jonson,  one  of  the  most  learned 
men  of  his  day,  could  not  only  repeat  all  that  he  had 
ever  written,  but  entire  books  that  he  had  read.  Euse- 


MEMORY   ASTD   ITS   MARVELS.  163 

bius  says  that  to  the  memory  of  Esdras  we  are  indebted 
for  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  which  were  destroyed  by  the 
Chaldeans.  A  French  writer  tells  of  a  young  Corsican, 
to  whom  he  dictated  one  day  "an  innumerable  multitude*' 
of  Greek,  Latin,  and  barbarous  words,  all  distinct  from 
one  another;  and  when  he  was  tired  of  doing  so,  the 
Corsican  repeated  them  in  the  same  order,  and  then  in  a 
reversed  order,  without  hesitation.  In  any  account  of 
wonderful  memories  an  omission  of  that  of  Thomas  Fuller, 
the  old  divine,  who  lived  in  1608-1661,  would  be  an  un 
pardonable  chasm.  The  anecdotes  told  of  his  gift  severely 
tax  our  credulity.  He  once  undertook,  after  walking  from 
Temple  Bar,  in  London,  to  the  farthest  end  of  Cheapside, 
to  repeat  on  his  return  the  inscriptions  on  all  the  signs 
in  their  order,  both  backward  and  forward, —  a  feat  which 
he  triumphantly  achieved.  Pepys,  in  his  diary,  under 
date  of  January  22,  1660,  says  that  Fuller  told  him  that 
"he  did  lately,  to  four  eminent  scholars,  dictate  together 
in  Latin  upon  different  subjects  of  their  proposing,  faster 
than  they  were  able  to  write,  till  they  were  tired."  It 
is  further  told  of  Fuller's  memory  that  he  could  repeat 
five  hundred  strange  words  at  two  hearings,  and  a  sermon 
at  one,  without  letting  slip  a  word.  He  would  sometimes, 
in  writing  a  manuscript  page,  set  down  the  first  word  of 
each  line,  from  the  top  of  the  page  to  the  bottom,  and 
then  the  second  word,  and  so  on  till  the  page  was  filled. 

In  1790  there  lived  in  Aberdeen,  Scotland,  a  gentle 
man's  servant,  who,  though  utterly  ignorant  of  Latin  and 
Greek,  yet,  upon  hearing  eight  or  ten  pages  of  Homer  or 
Virgil  distinctly  recited,  would  forthwith  repeat  them 
without  missing  a  word.  When  listening  to  the  reading, 
he  used  to  cover  his  face  with  his  hands  and  lean  upon 


164  MEMORY   AND   ITS   MAEVELS. 

a  table.  It  is  told  of  "Memory  Corner  Thompson,"  an 
Englishman,  so  called  from  his  extraordinary  gift  of 
memory,  that  he  drew,  in  the  space  of  twenty-two  hours, 
a  correct  plan  of  the  parish  of  St.  James,  Westminster, 
with  parts  of  the  parishes  of  St.  Marylebone,  St.  Ann, 
and  St.  Martin.  In  this  were  included  all  the  squares, 
streets,  courts,  lanes,  alleys,  markets;  every  church,  chapel, 
and  public  building;  all  stables  and  yards;  all  the  public- 
houses  and  corners  of  the  streets,  with  every  pump,  post, 
tree,  house,  bow- window;  and  all  the  minutise  about  St. 
James's  Palace.  This  he  did  in  the  presence  of  two  gentle 
men,  solely  from  memory.  Name  any  house  with  which 
he  was  intimate,  and  he  would  furnish  an  inventory  of 
its  contents  from  garret  to  cellar.  The  Rev.  E.  Coleridge 
had  a  verbal  memory  singularly  tenacious  and  exact.  He 
told  the  Royal  Commissioners  that  he  could  repeat  the 
whole  of  Homer,  Horace  and  Virgil  by  heart.  He  de 
clared  that  if  he  were  called  up  in  school,  he  could,  with 
an  English  Shakspeare  in  his  hand  (instead  of  the  proper 
book),  take  up  a  lesson  wherever  the  scholars  might  be 
reciting,  and  construe  the  passage  word  by  word,  and 
answer  any  question  that  might  be  asked,  and  go  on  at 
once  with  his  Shakspeare.  The  memory  of  musicians  for 
sounds  is  well  known.  The  marvelous  delicacy  of  Mozart's 
ear,  and  the  keenness  of  his  recollection,  are  well  attested 
by  the  story  of  his  treasuring  the  notes  of  the  Miserere  at 
the  Sistine  Chapel  at  Rome.  Though  the  copying  of  this 
piece  of  music  was  strictly  forbidden,  yet  Mozart,  then 
but  fourteen  years  old,  determined  to  make  himself  master 
of  it.  Seating  himself  in  a  corner  of  the  church,  he  con 
centrated  his  attention  powerfully  on  it,  and  on  going 
out,  noted  down  the  entire  piece.  Next  day  he  sang  the 


MEMORY   AND   ITS   MARVELS.  165 

Miserere  at  a  concert,  accompanying  himself  with  the 
harpsichord, —  which  so  electrified  the  Romans,  that  tho 
Pope,  hearing  of  the  affair,  requested  that  the  musical 
prodigy  should  be  presented  to  him.  In  this  case  the 
keenest  attention,  fastened  on  the  music  by  an  iron  will, 
would  not  have  availed,  had  it  not  been  assisted  by  an 
ear  sensitive  and  delicate  to  the  last  degree, —  a  gift  for 
which  Mozart  paid  the  tax  of  frequent  torture,  and  Beeth 
oven,  at  last,  that  of  incurable  deafness. 

Theodore  Parker's  memory  was  remarkably  mature, 
and  highly  cultivated.  When  in  the  Cambridge  Divinity 
School,  he  feared  that  it  was  defective,  and  so  had  an 
immense  chronological  chart  hung  up  in  his  room,  the 
contents  of  which  he  tasked  himself  to  commit.  It  in 
cluded  all  the  names  and  dates  from  Adam  down  to 
Nimrod,  Ptolemy  Soter,  Heliogabalus,  and  the  rest.  A 
gentleman  who  was  pursuing  some  historical  inquiries, 
and  wished  for  fuller  information  concerning  the  bar 
barous  feudal  codes  of  the  Middle  Ages  before  the  time 
of  Charlemagne,  applied  to  Parker  for  information.  "  Go," 
was  the  reply,  "  to  alcove  twenty-four,  shelf  one  hundred 
and  thirteen,  of  the  college  library  at  Cambridge,  and 
you  will  find  the  information  you  need  in  a  thick  quarto, 
bound  in  vellum,  and  lettered  Potgissier  de  Statu  Ser- 
vorum."  De  Quincey  had  all  his  life  an  abnormal  mem 
ory.  Its  minuteness  and  tenacity  were  often  a  positive 
snare  and  entanglement,  leading  him  into  long  digres 
sions,  from  which  he  never  came  back  to  his  theme.  The 
brilliant  conversation  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh  was  fed 
by  a  memory  that  held  everything  in  its  grasp.  "  His 
mind,1'  said  Robert  Hall,  "  is  a  spacious  repository  hung 
round  with  beautiful  images,  and  when  he  wants  one  he 


166  MEMORY    AND   ITS   MARVELS. 

has  nothing  to  do  but  reach  up  his  hand  to  a  peg  and 
take  it  down." 

No  faculty  of  the  mind  is  sharpened  more  by  use,  or 
more  quickly  blunted  by  neglect,  than  the  memory.  Many 
of  M.  Houdin  the  conjuror's  tricks  were  really  feats  of 
memory  and  quick  attention.  He  trained  himself  to  such 
a  pitch  of  keenness  of  attention,  that  he  could  walk  by  a 
toy-shop  window,  and  take  in  at  a  glance,  so  as  to  name 
them  afterward,  the  number,  the  arrangement  and  other 
particulars  of  forty  articles,  arranged  in  a  manner  purely 
arbitrary.  Sir  William  Hamilton  thought  that  he  could 
thus  take  in  seven  articles  at  a  glance  without  counting, 
and  was  rather  proud  of  his  ability!  It  is  said  that 
Henderson,  the  actor,  repeated  to  Dugald  Stewart,  after 
a  single  reading,  such  a  portion  of  a  newspaper  that  the 
metaphysician  thought  it  marvelous.  "  If,  like  me,"  said 
Henderson  modestly,  in  reply  to  the  exclamations  of 
surprise,  "  you  had  trusted  for  your  bread  to  getting  words 
by  heart,  you  would  not  be  astonished  that  habit  should 
produce  facility." 

We  shall  speak  of  but  one  more  remarkable  memory, 
—  that  of  Lord  Macaulay,  which,  extraordinary  by  nature, 
was  also  cultivated  and  trained  with  the  most  sedulous 
care.  He  forgot  nothing,  apparently,  which  he  had  once 
read.  Like  the  man  in  Juvenal,  he  could  tell  you  at  a 
moment's  notice  all  about 

"Nutricem  Anchisae,  nomen  patriamque  novercae 
Anchemoli ;  dicet  quot  Acestes  vixerit  annos, 
Quot  Siculus  Plirygibus  vini  donaverit  urnas." 

The  secret  of  his  vast  acquirements,  according  to  his  biog 
rapher,  lay  in  this  gift,  combined  with  another  hardly  less 


MEMORY   AND   ITS   MARVELS.  167 

invaluable, —  the  capacity  for  taking  in  at  a  glance  the 
contents  of  a  printed  page.  When  a  mere  child,  he  ac 
companied  his  father  on  an  afternoon  call,  and,  finding  on 
a  table  Scott's  "  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,"  possessed  him 
self  so  completely  of  its  contents  while  the  elders  were  talk 
ing,  that  on  his  return  home  he  repeated  to  his  mother 
as  many  cantos  as  she  had  the  patience  or  strength  to 
listen  to.  At  one  period  of  his  life  he  declared  that  if  by 
some  miracle  of  vandalism  all  the  extant  copies  of  "  The 
Pilgrim's  Progress"  and  "Paradise  Lost"  were  destroyed, 
he  would  undertake  to  reproduce  them  both  from  memory, 
whenever  a  revival  of  learning  should  come.  In  his  jour 
nal  of  a  trip  across  the  Irish  Sea,  we  read,  under  date  of 
August  16,  1849,  that  he  sat  on  deck  during  the  whole 
voyage,  and,  as  he  could  not  read,  "  used  an  excellent  sub 
stitute  for  reading.  I  went  through  '  Paradise  Lost,'  in  my 
head.  I  could  still  repeat  half  of  it,  and  that  the  best 
half."  One  day  he  handed  to  Lord  Aberdeen  a  sheet  of 
foolscap  covered  with  wrriting  arranged  in  three  parallel 
columns  down  each  of  the  four  pages.  "  This  document, 
of  which  the  ink  was  still  wet,"  says  Trevelyan,  his  biog 
rapher,  "  proved  to  be  a  full  list  of  the  senior  wranglers 
at  Cambridge,  for  the  hundred  years  during  which  the 
names  of  senior  wranglers  had  been  recorded  in  the  Uni 
versity  calendar."  On  another  occasion,  Macaulay  picked 
up,  while  he  was  waiting  in  a  Cambridge  coffee-house  for 
a  post-chaise,  a  country  newspaper  containing  two  poetical 
pieces,  read  them  once,  and,  without  thinking  of  them  again 
for  forty  years,  repeated  them  after  that  time  without  the 
change  of  a  word.  An  English  friend,  who  was  an  eye 
and  ear  witness  to  the  affair,  told  the  writer  of  this,  some 
years  ago,  of  the  following  feat  of  Macaulay's  memory. 


168  MEMORY    AND   ITS   MARVELS. 

About  twenty-seven  years  ago  Dr.  Routh,  President  of  Mag 
dalen  College,  Oxford,  died  at  the  age  of  one  hundred  years. 
The  next  morning,  at  a  literary  breakfast  in  London,  where 
Macaulay  was  present,  the  Times  was  brought  in,  and 
one  of  the  company  read  from  it  the  announcement  of 
Dr.  Routh's  decease.  Immediately  there  poured  forth  from 
Macaulay  a  flood  of  luminous  talk,  in  the  course  of  which 
he  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  Dr.  Routh,  who  was 
born  in  1753,  might,  as  a  child,  have  been  in  company 
with  Fontenelle,  who  himself  lived  to  a  hundred,  having 
been  born  in  1657,  or  about  the  time  Lewis  the  Fourteenth 
came  to  the  throne  of  France,  and  died  in  1757.  The 
speaker  then  proceeded,  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  to 
sketch  in  rapid  outline  some  of  the  principal  events, — 
political,  scientific  and  literary, —  in  Europe,  Asia  and 
America,  which  had  occurred  within  the  compass  of  two 
lives,  of  which  one  had  but  yesterday  been  extinguished. 
With  matchless  ease  and  rapidity  he  condensed  into  a  fif 
teen  minutes'  talk  a  multitude  of  important  facts,  which 
few  other  men  could  summon  from  the  pages  of  history, 
except  after  many  days  of  research  ;  and  under  circum 
stances  which  positively  forbade  any  possibility  of  prepara 
tion,  or  a  cut-and-dry  impromptu,  electrified  a  cultivated 
and  critical  audience  by  the  depth,  the  accuracy,  and,  above 
all,  the  prompt  availability  of  his  learning. 

So  much  does  the  intellectual  and  moral  advancement 
of  the  human  race  depend  upon  memory,  that  Gra*ffe, 
Dr.  Gray,  Aim6  Paris,  and  others  have  exhausted  their 
ingenuity  in  contriving  systems  of  mnemotechny  to  as 
sist  the  memory,  and  increase  its  power.  The  great  ob 
jection  to  such  systems  is  that  they  are  founded  upon 
incongruous  or  superficial  associations  of  ideas,  such  as 


MEMORY    AND    ITS    MARVELS.  169 

we  observe  in  the  common  forms  of  insanity.  Experience, 
moreover,  shows  that  the  resolution  and  effort  which 
the  mastery  of  these  systems  implies  would  render  them 
superfluous,  except  so  far  as  every  man  frames  an  artifi 
cial  memory  for  himself,  suited  to  his  own  turn  of  mind. 
The  true  art  of  cultivating  the  memory  may  be  condensed 
into  five  rules.  1.  The  association  or  connection  of  ideas. 
To  retain  facts  permanently,  we  should  gain  them  in 
such  order  that  each  shall  be  a  nucleus  or  basis  for  more 
in  an  endless  series.  The  highest  kind  of  memory  is  the 
philosophic,  which  associates  facts  and  truths  with  uni 
versal  principles.  2;  The  habit  of  close  attention,  which 
depends  largely  upon  the  degree  of  interest  we  feel  in 
what  is  to  be  remembered.  The  want  of  memory  of  which 
so  many  complain  is  like  Falstaff's  deafness:  "Rather 
out,  please  you.  It  is  the  disease  of  not'  listening,  the 
malady  of  not  marking,  that  I  am  troubled  withal."  Al 
most  every  person  recollects  what  keenly  interests  him. 
The  "  dull "  boy,  who  cannot  remember  a  line  of  his  arith 
metic  or  grammar  lesson,  is  the  very  one  who  never  for 
gets  a  face,  a  bird's  nest,  or  a  foot-path.  Why  is  it  that 
the  sportsman,  who  forgets  the  facts  of  history  or  science, 
can  recall  so  readily  and  accurately  the  names  and  pedi 
gree  of  all  the  winners  in  the  great  races?  It  is  simply 
because  he  has  been  strongly  interested  in  the  latter  class 
of  facts,  but  not  in  the  former.  When  the  ghost  says  to 
Hamlet:  "Remember  me!1'  he  replies:  "Yes,  as  long  as 
memory  holds  a  place  in  this  distracted  globe."  The  scene 
he  had  witnessed  made  so  intense  an  impression  that  it 
formed  from  that  time  a  part  of  his  moral  being,  separ 
able  from  it  only  by  his  dissolution.  In  strong  minds 
the  habit  of  attention  is  not  a  mere  aptness  to  receive 


170  MEMORY    AND    ITS    MARVELS. 

an  impression  ;  it  is  a  strenuous  effort.  They  seize  facts 
as  a  hungry  lion  seizes  his  prey.  Emerson  remarks 
that  there  are  some  things  which  everybody  remembers. 
A  creditor  is  in  little  danger  of  forgetting  his  debtor,  and 
men  generally  keep  an  insult  fresh.  Ben  Jonson  used 
to  say  that  it  was  hard  to  forget  the  last  kick.  In  Scot 
land  it  was  customary  in  the  olden  time  to  maintain 
boundary  lines  by  whipping  a  boy  on  the  site.  The  fever 
ish,  hurried  life  which  most  persons  live  to-day,  and  the 
nervous  exhaustion  consequent  upon  over-stimulus  and 
prolonged  fatigue,  are  fatal  to  vivid  remembrance.  Men 
whose  minds  are  continually  flitting  from  one  thing  to 
another,  dwelling  upon  nothing  long,  must  necessarily 
receive  but  transitory  impressions.  3.  A  clear  apprehen 
sion  of  what  is  to  be  remembered.  4.  A  strong  deter 
mination  to  remember.  Though  memory  depends  largely 
upon  insight  and  mental  activity,  yet  there  is  no  doubt 
that  a  man  can  remember  in  a  great  degree,  as  Johnson 
said  a  man  could  compose, —  by  dogged  determination. 
Euler,  the  mathematician,  being  almost  totally  blind,  was 
obliged  to  make  and  to  retain  in  his  head  the  calculations 
and  formula  which  others  preserve  in  books.  The 
result  was  that  the  extent,  readiness  and  accuracy  of  his 
mathematical  memory  became  prodigious,  and  D'Alembert 
declared  it  to  be  barely  credible  to  those  who  had  seen 
its  feats.  No  other  faculty  of  the  mind  is  so  rapidly 
strengthened  by  exercise  as  memory.  When  Edward  Ev 
erett  began  preaching,  he  learned  by  heart  only  one  page 
of  his  sermon  at  a  time;  when  he  quit  preaching,  he 
could  learn  the  entire  sermon  by  reading  it  over  twice. 
"A  very  common  reason,"  says  a  writer,  "  why  men  do 
not  remember,  is  that  they  do  not  try;  a  hearty  and 


MEMORY   ASTD    ITS   MARVELS.  171 

ever-present  desire  to  prevail  is  the  chief  element  of  all 
success.  Nothing  but  the  fairy's  wand  can  realize  the 
capricious  desire  of  the  moment,  but  as  to  the  objects  of 
laudable  wishes,  deeply  breathed  and  for  many  a  night 
and  day  ever  present  to  the  mind,  these  are  placed  by 
Providence  more  within  our  reach  than  is  commonly  be 
lieved.  When  a  person  says,  If  I  could  only  have  my 
wish  I  would  excel  in  such  an  art  or  science,  we  may 
generally  answer:  The  truth  is,  you  have  no  such  wish; 
all  you  covet  is  the  empty  applause,  not  the  substantial 
accomplishment."  5.  Method.  In  studying  a  subject,  we 
shall  fix  our  acquisitions  most  securely  in  the  mind  by 
mastering  its  parts  in  a  natural  and  orderly  sequence, 
from  the  easier  to  the  most  difficult.  Study  of  this  kind 
has  been  compared  to  a  well-built  stair-case,  by  which 
you  can  climb  to  a  great  height  with  a  minimum  of 
fatigue,  lifting  the  body  only  a  few  inches  at  a  time.  In 
a  philosophic  memory,  the  various  parts  of  a  subject,  like 
the  stones  in  an  arch,  will  often  keep  one  another  in 
place. 

Among  the  best  rules  ever  laid  down  for  the  cultiva 
tion  of  the  memory  are  those  of  Thomas  Fuller,  some  of 
whose  feats  we  have  mentioned :  "  First,  soundly  infix  in 
thy  mind  what  thou  desirest  to  remember.  What  wonder 
is  it  if  agitation  of  business  jog  that  out  of  thy  head  which 
was  there  rather  tacked  than  fastened?  It  is  best  knocking 
in  the  nail  overnight,  and  clinching  it  the  next  morning. 
Overburden  not  thy  memory  to  make  so  faithful  a  servant 
a  slave.  Remember  Atlas  was  weary.  Have  as  much 
reason  as  a  camel,  to  rise  when  thou  hast  thy  full  load. 
Memory,  like  a  purse,  if  it  be  overfull  that  it  cannot  shut, 
all  will  drop  out  of  it:  take  heed  of  a  gluttonous  curiosity 


172  MEMORY   AND   ITS   MARVELS. 

to  feed  on  many  things,  lest  the  greediness  of  the  appe 
tite  of  thy  memory  spoil  the  digestion  thereof.  Marshal 
thy  notions  into  a  handsome  method.  One  will  carry  twice 
more  weight  trussed  and  packed  up  in  bundles  than  when 
it  lies  untoward  flapping  and  hanging  about  his  shoulders, 
Things  orderly  fardled  up  under  heads  are  most  portable." 
Finally,  the  retentiveness  of  the  memory  depends  largely 
upon  the  bodily  condition.  The  impressions  made  upon  the 
mental  tablet  are  like  those  made  upon  the  photographer's 
plate.  If  the  chemicals,  solutions,  etc.,  are  good  and  prop 
erly  applied,  and  the  plate  is  in  a  condition  to  receive  the 
impressions,  there  will  be  a  good  picture ;  otherwise  it  will 
be  dull,  brown,  and  indistinct,  So  with  a  man  who  is 
sickly  and  debilitated,  and  whose  brain  is  consequently 
weak  ;  the  pictures  made  upon  his  mind  will  partake  of 
its  weakness  and  obscurity.  The  memory  is  therefore  one 
of  the  most  delicate  tests  of  disease  or  natural  decay  in 
the  brain.  When  a  man  constantly  forgets  his  appoint 
ments;  mislays  his  books  and  papers;  is  oblivious  of  the 
names  of  his  dearest  friends;  forgets  at  any  interruption 
to  finish  a  task  which  he  has  begun,  and  finds  that  he 
cannot  hold  in  his  mental  gripe  for  a  few  consecutive 
minutes  the  name  of  the  month  or  the  day  of  the  week, 
—  and  especially  when,  along  with  this,  he  feels  an  occa 
sional  numbness  in  a  finger,  and  drops  his  cane  uncon 
sciously  in  walking, —  he  has  reason,  according  to  medical 
authority,  to  fear  that  a  softening  of  the  brain,  or  some 
form  of  cerebral  disorganization,  has  begun,  and  he  can 
not  too  quickly  apply  the  remedy. 


FOOLS. 


"  Be  tolerant  to  fools."— MARCUS  AURELIUS. 

"TTTHY  is  it  that  fools  are  laughed  at,  even  by  kind- 
»  *  hearted  men?  Is  not  the  lack  of  brains  a  misfor 
tune  to  be  pitied  rather  than  sneered  at  by  those  who  are 
better  endowed?  Is  intellectual  deficiency  or  deformity 
less  entitled  to  our  commiseration  than  physical?  Pascal 
has  answered  these  questions  in  his  usual  acute  way. 
"  Whence  is  it,"  he  asks,  *'  that  a  lame  man  does  not  of 
fend  us,  while  the  crippled  in  mind  does  offend  us?  It  is 
because  the  lame  man  acknowledges  that  we  walk  straight; 
whereas  the  crippled  in  mind  maintain  that  it  is  we  who 
go  lame.  But  for  this,  we  should  feel  more  compassion 
for  them  than  resentment."  The  same  profound  thinker 
tells  us,  however,  in  another  place,  that  man  is  necessa 
rily  so  much  of  a  fool  that  it  would  be  a  species  of  folly 
not  to  be  a  fool, —  a  comforting  theory  to  the  stupid,  for 
if  wisdom  is  attainable  only  through  foolishness,  who  is 
more  to  be  congratulated  than  he  who  has  scaled  the  diz 
ziest  peaks  of  folly,  the  fool  par  excellence? 

Whatever  may  be  the  reason,  we  confess  we  have  a 
kindly  feeling  for  fools.  Like  Charles  Lamb,  we  love  to 
discover  a  streak  of  folly  in  a  man;  we  venerate  an  honest 
obliquity  of  understanding.  The  more  laughable  blunders 
a  man  commits  in  your  company,  the  more  tests  he  gives 
you  that  he  is  not  sly,  snaky,  and  hypocritical, —  that  he 

173 


174  FOOLS. 

is  not,  while  whispering  honeyed  words  in  your  ear,  play 
ing  some  subtle,  treacherous  game  to  overreach  you.  That 
fools  are  happy  beings,  all  will  admit.  It  is  the  empty 
vessel  that  has  a  merry  ring  ;  the  open  eye  that  weeps. 
It  is  the  great  fault  of  the  present  age  that  it  is  over- 
wise, —  that  it  is  too  transcendentally  sapient  for  its  own 
comfort.  We  read  essays  on  ventilation  and  drainage  till 
we  hardly  dare  to  breathe  lest  we  should  inhale  deadly  gases 
and  microscopic  particles  of  poison.  We  analyze  our  food, 
hunting  for  adulterations,  till  we  almost  dread  to  eat  for 
fear  of  being  poisoned.  We  put  microscopes  to  our  eyes, 
and  cannot  drink  for  fear  of  animalcules.  We  investi 
gate  and  pry  into  the  foundations  of  our  beliefs  till  we 
become  universal  skeptics,  and  are  positive  only  that  we 
are  positive  of  nothing.  Instead  of  enjoying  the  sweet  of 
life  as  it  comes  up,  and  finding  a  heart  to  laugh  at  the 
bitter,  we  are  continually  debating  whether  life  is  worth 
living,  and  racking  our  brains  to  provide  for  some  future 
dreaded  contingency,  letting  the  flower  and  quintessence 
of  life  escape  ere  we  are  ready  to  enjoy  it.  We  are  al 
ways  preparing  for  a  "  rainy  day,"  or  some  calamity  that 
may  break  upon  us  like  a  thunderbolt.  It  is  even  rare 
to  hear  any  man  laugh  now-a-days,  at  least  with  the  care 
less,  ringing  laugh  of  folly;  nobody  gives  care  to  the  winds 
long  enough  for  such  an  outburst  of  merriment ;  every 
where  we  find  that  the  happy,  simple-hearted  fool  of  olden 
times  is  extinct,  and  that  the  race  of  calculators  and  econ 
omists  has  succeeded.  The  schoolmaster  is  now  abroad, 
and  there  are  few  persons  in  these  intensely  intellectual 
days  who  sympathize  with  gentle  Elia's  affection  for  the 
fool.  "  I  love  a  fool,"  says  he,  "  as  naturally  as  if  I  were 
kith  and  kin  to  him.  When  a  child,  with  childlike  appro-* 


FOOLS.  175 

hensions,  that  dived  not  below  the  surface  of  the  matter, 
I  read  those  Parables, —  not  guessing  at  the  involved  wis 
dom, — I  had  more  yearnings  toward  that  simple  architect 
that  built  his  house  upon  the  sand,  than  I  entertained  for 
his  more  cautious  neighbor;  I  grudged  at  the  hard  censure 
pronounced  at  the  quiet  soul  that  kept  his  talent.  *  *  * 
I  never  have  made  an  acquaintance  since  that  lasted,  or 
a  friendship  that  answered,  with  any  that  had  not  some 
tincture  of  the  absurd  in  their  characters.  And  take  my 
word  for  this,  reader,  and  say  a  fool  told  it  you,  if  you 
please,  that  he  who  had  not  a  dram  of  folly  in  his  mixture 
had  pounds  of  much  worse  matter  in  his  composition." 

One  of  the  advantages  of  folly  is  that  in  society  it 
raises  no  expectations, —  pledges  you  to  nothing.  Among 
the  most  unhappy  people  in  society  are  those  who  have 
won  a  reputation  for  smartness,  and  who  therefore  have 
a  reputation  to  maintain.  If  you  are  noted  as  a  brilliant 
talker,  a  saver  of  witty  things,  you  must  exert  yourself, 
at  whatever  cost  or  inconvenience,  to  keep  up  to  your 
level.  In  vain  will  you  plead  ill-health  or  low  spirits,  a 
head-ache  or  a  heart-ache;  you  may  have  lost  money  in 
a  stock  speculation,  or  buried  your  grandmother,  or  been 
jilted  by  a  flirt;  no  matter,  you  must  make  an  effort  to 
shine,  unless  you  would  have  it  whispered  about  that 
you  have  been  overrated,  or  are  suffering  from  a  soften 
ing  of  the  brain.  Everybody  has  heard  the  story  of  the 
fashionable  lady  who  invited  a  well-known  wit  to  a  party, 
and  in  the  course  of  the  evening  sent  her  little  daughter 
to  him  with  the  message:  "Please,  sir,  mamma  wishes  to 
ask  if  you  will  proceed  to  be  witty  now?"  Once  a  wit, 
always  a  wit, —  so  runs  the  bond.  Not  so  with  the  dull 
man;  once  ranked  in  this  category,  he  is  never  pestered 


176  FOOLS. 

with  solicitations  to  amuse  his  fellow-beings,  or  assailed 
by  criticism.  The  chance  is,  that  he  is  suspected  of  possess 
ing  a  hidden  fund  of  wit  or  wisdom  which  he  does  not 
care  to  betray.  It  may  be '  affirmed,  therefore,  that  "  in 
society,  if  wit  is  silvern,  dullness  is  golden.  Wit  is  the 
bee  that  works;  dullness  is  the  drone  that  waits  snugly 
for  the  honey  to  come  to  its  mouth." 

It  may  seem  paradoxical  to  maintain  that  fools  are  a 
blessing  to  society;  but  a  little  reflection  will  teach  us  a 
large  charity  for  them, —  will  show  that  they  are  essen 
tial  to  its  very  existence.  They  are  the  cyphers  of  the 
community,  without  which  the  social  problem  could  not 
be  worked  out.  What,  for  example,  would  be  the  result, 
if,  whenever  a  new  doctrine  is  propounded  in  science,  we 
were  all  profound  thinkers,  capable  of  tracing  out  all  its 
logical  consequences?  The  world  would  be  in  an  uproar, 
and  harmony  would  be  an  impossibility.  Why  are  men 
of  science  often  so  exceedingly  sensitive  to  some  appar 
ently  unimportant  attack  upon  one  of  their  minor  con 
clusions?  Is  it  not  because  they  are  accustomed  to  logical 
methods,  and  know  that  if  you  touch  the  remotest  out 
work  of  their  doctrine  you  send  a  shock  to  the  very  center 
of  their  systems?  "Be  heretical  in  the  most  trifling  in 
ference  from  mathematical  investigation,  and  it  is  at  once 
evident,"  says  a  writer,  "that  you  must  come  into  con 
flict  with  the  fundamental  axioms  on  which  the  whole 
science  reposes.  We  are  tolerant  only  because  we  are 
stupid.  We  allow  the  enemy  to  open  some  very  remote 
back  door,  because  it  is  so  very  small,  and  we  do  not 
see  that  we  have  admitted  him  as  effectually  as  if  we 
had  flung  the  main  gates  wide  open."  A  critic  of  Joseph 
De  Maistre  complains  that  he  would  defend  the  most  ab- 


FOOLS.  177 

solute  superfcetation  of  the  Romish  Church,  or  the  most 
obsolete  custom  of  absolute  monarchies,  with  the  same 
reverence  and  conviction  as  the  fundamental  dogmas  of 
Christianity.  But  the  reason  is  plain.  In  the  eyes  of 
this  unswerving  and  consistent  champion  of  Ultramon- 
tanism  and  Divine  Right,  each  of  these  things  was  a  part 
of  a  sacred  whole,  and  could  not  be  abandoned  with 
safety  or  honor.  He  had  started  in  life,  as  Dr.  Johnson 
phrases  it,  with  his  fagot  of  opinions  made  up,  and  he 
felt  that  it  was  impossible  to  draw  out  a  single  stick 
without  weakening  the  whole.  "  If  we  had  only  known 
in  time,"  says  a  writer,  "how  much  trouble  early  physical 
inquirers  were  bringing  into  the  world,  how  many  con 
troversies  they  were  introducing,  what  a  biting  acid  they 
were  pouring  upon  the  consolidated  doctrines  of  ages,  we 
should  have  sprung  upon  them  and  strangled  them  at 
their  birth.  We  are  amazed  that  Galileo  should  have 
been  persecuted  for  asserting  the  motion  of  the  earth; 
but  if  his  judges  had  caught  some  dim  glimpse  of  the 
harvest  that  was  to  spring  from  that  little  seed  of  heresy, 
of  the  tremendous  explosion  that  would  follow  when  the 
spark  had  fairly  set  fire  to  the  train,  they  would  have 
trampled  it  out  more  carefully  than  we  should  try  to 
check  the  speed  of  the  most  deadly  contagion."  Is  it  not 
evident,  then,  that  we  live  in  peace  with  each  other  only 
because  we  are  stupid, —  that,  but  for  this  lucky  fact,  we 
should  be  burning  everybody  who  disagrees  with  us? 

Again,  fools  make  the  best  reformers.  What  would 
be  the  condition  of  the  world,  if  it  had  no  men  of  one 
idea, —  men  who  view  every  subject  from  a  single  stand 
point,  and  are  dominated  by  one  single  purpose,  regard 
ing  all  others  as  trivial, —  it  is  easy  to  see.  Could  we 


178  FOOLS. 

lift  the  veil,  and  discern  all  the  consequences  of  a  single 
change  in  the  world's  constitution,  we  should  all  be  con 
servatives.  It  is  not  the  men  of  broad  and  comprehensive 
vision,  whose  horizon  of  thought  embraces  many  objects 
and  objections,  that  project  and  push  through  great  plans 
of  reform.  It  is  the  mole-eyed  man,  who  has  brooded 
over  a  single  truth  till  it  overshadows  his  whole  mental 
horizon,  that  makes  the  best  reformer.  Such  a  person  is 
tormented  by  none  of  the  doubts  that  distract  and  cripple 
the  profound  thinker.  Wasting  no  time  in  deliberation, 
he  cuts  the  knots  which  he  cannot  untie,  and,  overleap 
ing  all  logical  preliminaries,  comes  at  once  to  a  conclu 
sion.  Having  got  hold  of  an  idea,  he  never  bothers  his 
brains  with  objections,  but  goes  at  once  to  making  pro 
selytes,  satisfied  that  to  procure  its  adoption  is  the  one 
thing  essential  to  insure  the  millennium.  For  example, 
his  panacea  may  be  ventilation;  and,  viewing  all  other 
conceivable  things  in  its  relations  to  ventilation,  he  may 
be  content  to  spend  his  life  like  a  miner,  in  continual 
working  at  one  narrow  subterranean  gallery;  but  he 
generally,  by  his  persistence,  gains  his  end,  and  the  world 
is  benefited  by  his  toils. 

Again,  fools  are  absolutely  necessary  to  make  society 
endurable.  There  is  a  disposition  in  our  day  to  worship 
great  men.  Hero-worship,  is,  indeed,  the  mania  of  the 
age.  We  are  in  danger  of  being  tyrannized  over  by  clever 
men.  A  man  of  erratic  talents  is  called  a  genius,  and  a 
hundred  follies,  and  even  vices,  are  excused  in  him,  while 
his  honest  neighbor  who  startles  society  by  no  freaks  or 
extravagances,  and  can  boast  only  of  good  sense,  is  sneered 
at  as  "  slow."  Yet  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  the  man 
of  brilliant  talents  is  infinitely  less  useful  than  the  man 


FOOLS.  179 

of  common  sense.  All  the  great  departments  of  practical 
life  are  filled  with  "slow  and  sure,"  rather  than  with 
smart  men.  Our  best  merchants,  statesmen,  generals, 
judges,  are  plain  men,  not  men  of  genius.  God  never  in 
tended  that  clever  men  should  monopolize  everything. 
He  did  not  make  the  world  for  clever  men  only.  Doubt 
less  a  certain  number  of  men  of  genius  are  necessary  to 
every  age  and  country.  They  are  the  very  guano  of  the 
exhausted  State.  But  no  sensible  farmer  thinks  of  smother 
ing  his  field  with  guano.  Make  the  air  all  oxygen,  and 
who  could  breathe  it?  Brilliant  men  are  well  enough 
occasionally,  but  who  wants  to  be  always  staring  at  pyro 
technics? 

What  a  comfort  is  a  dull  but  kindly  person  at  the  fire 
side,  to  one  who  is  worn  and  fatigued  by  the  cares  and 
struggles  of  life!  A  ground  shade  over  a  gas-light  hardly 
brings  more  solace  to  the  dazzled  eyes  than  does  such  a 
one  to  our  minds.  Even  the  wisest  and  most  thoughtful 
men  love  such  repose.  According  to  Cumberland,  "  even 
dullness,  as  long  as  it  was  accompanied  with  placidity, 
was  no  absolute  discommendation  of  the  companion  of 
Lord  Mansfield's  private  hours;  it  was  a  kind  of  cushion 
to  his  understanding."  Mediocrity  is,  after  all,  the  best 
thing  in  life.  The  tasteless  commonplaces  are  the  stand 
ards, —  bread  and  water,  and  good  dull,  steady  people. 
Emerson  justly  says  that  society  loves  Creole  natures, 
and  sleepy,  languishing  manners, —  the  air  of  drowsy 
strength  that  disarms  criticism.  To  make  social  inter 
course  profitable,  there  must  be  an  opportunity  for  per 
fect  relaxation.  The  charm  of  the  best  society  is  the 
absence  of  all  effort  to  sparkle  or  astonish.  The  most 
wearisome  of  people  are  the  De  Staels  and  "Conversation- 


180  FOOLS 

Sharps,"  wha  are  always  saying  brilliant  things, —  who 
feel  like  Titus,  "I  have  lost  a  moment!"  if  they  suffer 
a  fragment  of  time  to  escape  unenriched  by  a  fine  saying. 
When  the  author  of  "  Corinne "  visited  Germany,  the 
leading  men-of-letters  there  shuddered  at  the  approach 
of  this  impersonation  of  volubility.  Schiller  groaned  over 
"the  weary  hours  he  had  to  pass"  in  her  company,  and 
Goethe  was  both  annoyed  and  disgusted  by  her.  Nothing 
tires  so  soon  as  unvaried  sprightliness,  unshaded  mirth, 
and  brilliancy  unrelieved.  It  is  like  the  toujours  perdrix 
of  the  French  abb6,  or  dining  eternally  off  capsicum, 
peppercorns  and  jams. 

"Better  than  such  discourse  doth  silence  long, 
Long  barren  silence  square  with  my  desire; 

To  sit  without  emotion,  hope  or  aim, 

In  the  loved  presence  of  my  cottage  fire, 

And  listen  to  the  flapping  of  the  flame, 
Or  kettle  chirping  its  faint  under-song." 

We  would  as  soon  lodge  over  a  powder-magazine  as 
live  with  a  man  of  genius.  We  would  rather  have  water 
than  nectar  for  a  steady  drink, —  bread  and  butter  than 
ambrosia  for  our  daily  food.  In  nature  the  most  useful 
things  are  the  most  common.  Water,  air,  bread,  are 
cheap  and  plentiful.  Leaves  and  grass  are  neither  of 
crimson  nor  of  gold  color,  but  plain,  sober  green.  "  When 
a  boy,"  says  a  writer,  "  I  often  made  fireworks.  Once,  in 
compounding  a  set  of  squibs,  I  forgot  to  mix  up  with  the 
positives  of  saltpetre  and  gunpowder  the  negative  of 
pounded  charcoal;  and,  in  firing  them  off,  each  consisted 
of  but  one  explosion,  bright,  no  doubt,  but  transient  also, 
and  dangerous  withal;  while  the  squibs  which  were  rightly 
mixed  up  were  both  bright  and  sparkling,  too,  and  much 


FOOLS.  181 

more  lasting;  besides,  they  did  not  scorch  me.    Dull  men 
are  to  society  what  charcoal  is  to  squibs." 

Finally,  we  must  add  that  the  true  fool  nasdtur,  non 
fit.  If  a  man  has  not  the  natural  gift,  he  may  say  and 
do  many  foolish  things,  but  he  will  never  manifest  a 
positive  genius  for  folly.  He  may  miss  the  point  of  a 
joke  or  a  remark,  laugh  in  the  wrong  place,  read  without 
getting  at  the  drift,  be  confident  without  grounds,  live 
without  learning  by  experience,  and  act  without  realizing 
the  consequences,  and  yet  not  be  an  absolute,  unmistak 
able  fool.  On  the  other  hand,  if  a  man  has  the  inborn 
talent,  there  is  no  pinnacle  of  dullness  to  which  he  may 
not  soar.  Johnson  recognized  this  when  he  said  of  the 
elder  Sheridan:  "Why,  sir,  Sherry  is  dull,  naturally 
dull;  but  it  must  have  taken  him  a  great  deal  of  pains 
to  become  what  we  now  see  him.  Such  an  excess  of 
stupidity  is  not  in  nature." 


ANGLING-. 


OLDEN  June,— the  "leafy  month,"  which  is  a  happy 
compromise  between  weeping  spring  and  broiling 
midsummer, —  is  near  at  hand,  and  in  a  few  weeks  hun 
dreds  of  our  fellow-citizens  will  be  seeking  refreshment 
for  body  and  soul  in  the  pleasant  and  healthful  amuse 
ment  of  angling.  Of  all  the  out-door  recreations  which 
relieve  the  monotony  of  life,  and  cheat  care  and  sorrow 
of  their  sting,  there  is  no  other,  we  believe,  so  replete  with 
gentle  excitement  and  sustained  gratification, — none  which 
so  rarely  palls  on  the  taste,  which  age  so  seldom  withers 
or  custom  so  infrequently  stales, — as  that  which  has  been 
glorified  by  Izaak  Walton.  Who  can  forget  the  moment  of 
exultation,  when,  a  newly-breeched  urchin,  he  first  captured 
with  a  piece  of  twine,  a  crooked  pin,  and  a  worm,  a  petty 
perch  or  catfish?  Who,  in  reviewing  a  long  life,  can  re 
call  any  other  sensation  comparable  in  intensity  with  that 
he  felt  when  he  grassed  his  first  trout  after  a  long  and 
almost  desperate  contest?  All  first  sensations  have  a  pecu 
liar  thrill ;  but  no  other  so  penetrates  to  the  very  core 
and  marrow  of  one's  being  as  this  of  the  first  fish  caught 
with  a  fly.  The  first  successful  shot  at  a  flying  bird;  the  first 
"check-mate!"  which  has  escaped  your  lips  after  a  hard- 
fought  match  with  the  knights  and  pawns;  the  first  ten- 
strike  in  a  bowling  alley  ;  the  shooting  a  boat's  length 
ahead  of  your  rival  near  the  judges'  stand  in  your  first 
race;  the  first  appearance  of  an  essay  or  "pome"  from 

182 


ANGLING.  183 

your  pen  in  the  village  newspaper  ;    the  first  brief  after 
your  call  to  the  bar;  the  titillating  plaudit  after  your  first 
essay  or  talk  at  a  literary  club:    the  sensations  produced 
by  these  are  all  more  or  less  similar  in  kind,  but  they  all, 
even  if  equal  in  degree,  lose  their  edge  as  time  wears  on. 
Perhaps  the  nearest  approximation  to  the  feeling  in  ques 
tion  is  that  which  is  experienced  by  the  despairing  lover 
when  he  hears  the  trembling  "  Yes,"  or  the  electric  thrill 
that  follows  the  first  union  of  his  lips  with  those  of  her 
he  adores  ;    or,  again,  a  young  lady  may  have  felt  some 
thing  like  it  on  her  first  appearance  at  a  fashionable  party, 
when  she  saw  all  eyes  turned  toward  her,  and  knew  that 
her  dress  was  divinely  made,  and  that  her  gloves  fitted  ex 
quisitely.     But  this  joy  can  be  felt  but  once  in  life,  while 
the  first  fish  comes  back  to  recollection  as  fresh,  as  thrill 
ing,  as  when  the  heart  beat  quick  at  its  capture.      It  is 
a  striking  fact  that  while  other   pleasures   pall  with  age, 
the  fondness  for  fishing  outlives  even  the  capacity  of  en 
joying    it.      Bodily  infirmities    may  weigh  us   down  ;    the 
nervous   energy  may   have   left  our   arm,  and   the  quick 
sight  our  eye;  we  may  hobble  with  difficulty  to  the  brook- 
side,  and  go  away  with  rheumatic  aches  and   pains;  yet, 
even  then,  when  fallen  into  the  lean  and  slippered  panta 
loon,  we  love  to  fight  our  piscatory  battles  over  again,  and 
to  tell  any  listener  whom  we  can  buttonhole  of  our  tri 
umphs  when  we  captured 

"The  springing  trout,  in  speckled  pride, — 
The  salmon,  monarch  of  the  tribe." 

Is  it  not  strange,  then,  considering  the  innocence  and 
admitted  fascination  of  this  sport,  that  it  should  have  been 
scowled  upon  by  some  moralists?  "An  angler,"  says  the 
author  of  the  "  Tin  Trumpet,"  "  is  a  piscatory  assassin, — 


184  ANGLING. 

a  Jack  Ketch,  catcher  of  Jack,  *  *  *  Everything  pertain 
ing  to  the  angler's  art  is  cowardly,  cruel,  treacherous,  and 
cat-like."  "Angling,"  growls  the  great  literary  bear,  Dr. 
Johnson,  "  is  an  amusement  with  a  stick  and  a  string,  with 
a  fool  at  one  end  and  a  hook  at  the  other."  The  secret 
of  this  cynical  sarcasm  probably  is  that  the  old  fellow 
essayed  at  some  time  to  cast  a  fly  for  trout  or  grayling, 
or  to  fish  with  ground  bait  for  gudgeons,  and  came  home 
with  a  superfluous  basket.  No  wonder  the  great  lexi 
cographer  conceived  a  disgust  for  the  sport,  and  denounced 
the  grapes  he  could  not  reach  as  sour, —  his  morose  piety 
barely  saving  him  from  swearing!  It  would  have  been 
marvelous,  indeed,  if  that  clumsy,  elephantine  man, —  that 
literary  hippopotamus, —  had  succeeded  in  beguiling  the 
shy  tenants  of  the  stream;  in  mastering  without  an  ap 
prenticeship  a  craft  which  requires  as  much  tact,  strategy, 
and  finesse,  as  diplomacy  or  war.  Fancy  this  awkward  and 
impatient  giant  trying  to  beguile  the  tricky  trout  with  a 
rod  almost  as  slender  as  a  pipe-stem,  and  a  line  like  a 
spider's  thread!  Fancy  the  leviathan  of  literature  strid 
ing  among  the  bushes  on  the  sedgy  bank  of  a  trout-brook, 
—  sweating  at  every  pore,  blowing  like  a  whale,  and  crash 
ing  through  the  tangled  branches  like  a  rhinoceros  through 
the  underwood  of  an  African  jungle!  Of  course  he  would 
lose  all  patience,  especially  if  he  should  chance  to  dash  his 
foot  against  some  hidden  stub  or  stone,  and  fall  sprawling 
to  the  earth  with  thundering  sound,  while  his  hat  and  wig 
were  caught  by  the  branches  of  an  overhanging  tree !  Of 
course  he  would  throw  down  the  rod  and  line  in  disgust, 
and  would  let  many  a  volcanic  explosion  escape  from  his 
pils,  and  ever  afterward  associate  the  "  speckled  beauties  " 
of  the  brook  with  anything  but  pleasant  recollections! 


ANGLING.  185 

We  honor  the  great  moralist,  in  spite  of  his  anti-angling 
heresies.  Gruff  and  bigoted  though  he  was,  he  had  a  large 
heart,  the  essential  qualities  of  which  were  the  same  as 
those  that  made  up  the  fresh,  genial,  kindly  nature  of 
Izaak  Walton.  He  had  patience  enough  to  compile  his 
dictionary,— a  colossal  task,  which  would  have  taxed  the 
energies  of  half-a-dozen  other  men, —  patience 

"to  chase 

A  panting  syllable  through  time  and  space, 
Start  it  at  home,  and  hunt  it  in  the  dark 
To  Gaul,  to  Greece,  and  into  Noah's  ark," — 

but  not  enough  to  coax  the  shy  trout  from  his  hiding- 
place.  To  the  opinion  of  Johnson  we  would  oppose  that 
of  men  who  have  made  a  more  thorough  trial  of  the  sport, 
—  men  who  have  stood  for  days  up  to  their  knees  in  water, 
and  in  the  coldest  weather,  intent  on  their  employ;  who 
have  returned  to  it  again  and  again  with  the  keenest  relish, 
and  who,  after  spending  the  vacations  of  a  life-time  in 
piscatory  amusement,  have  not  wearied  of  it  at  last.  We 
might  oppose,  also,  the  verdicts  of  hundreds  of  men  of  the 
highest  rank  and  genius,  who  have  been  enthusiastically 
fond  of  angling,  and  proud  to  rank  themselves  among  the 
disciples  of  gentle  Izaak  Walton.  We  know  that  "holy 
George  Herbert,"  the  pet  of  the  English  Church,  loved 
angling,  and  to  his  name,  and  those  of  Dr.  Howell,  Sir 
Henry  Wotton,  Sir  John  Offley,  and  others  cited  by  Izaak, 
might  be  added  that  of  Gay,  who-  alternately  wrote  his 
poetry  and  caught  his  trout  at  Amesbury;  Coleridge,  the 
weird  poet  of  the  Lakes;  Sir  Humphrey  Davy,  who  never 
tired  of  fishing,  though  he  confessed  that,  through  his  lack 
of  skill,  his  flies  always  fell  like  lead  on  the  water;  Gibbon, 


186  ANGLING. 

Chantrey,  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  the  heroic  Nelson,  who  was 
an  expert  fly-fisher,  and  so  passionately  fond  of  the  sport 
that  he  continued  it  with  his  left  hand,  after  he  had  lost 
his  right  in  the  service  of  his  country.  Dr.  Paley  was  so 
enamored  of  angling  that  he  hobbled  to  the  river's  side 
in  spite  of  his  bodily  infirmities,  to  ply  the  line,  and  had 
his  portrait  painted  with  a  fishing-rod  in  his  hand.  Being 
asked  by  the  Bishop  of  Durham  when  one  of  his  great  works 
would  be  finished,  he  answered  naively,  as  if  fly-fishing,  and 
not  philosophy,  were  the  main  business  of  his  life:  "My 
lord,  I  shall  work  steadily  at  it  when  the  fly-fishing  season 
is  over."  It  has  been  said  that  Zimmerman  learned  in 
the  seclusion  of  this  pastime  to  turn  his  contemplative 
eye  inward,  and,  finding  that  he  was  never  less  alone  than 
when  alone,  discovered  the  virtues  and  charms  of  that  soli 
tude  on  which  he  has  so  eloquently  and  seductively  dis 
coursed.  Wordsworth,  the  man  of  "  cheerful  yesterdays 
and  confident  to-morrows,"  was  passionately  fond  of  fish 
ing,  and  it  was  while  resting 

"beneath  the  floating  shade 

Of  willows  grey,  close  crowding  o'er  the  brook," 

that  he  acquired  that  profound  knowledge  of  Nature's 
ways  which  has  made  his  verse  a  delight  to  all  thoughtful 
readers. 

Besides  all  these,  the  shield  of  fly-fishing  is  emblazoned 
with  the  names  of  George  IV,  Harvey,  Dr.  Babington, 
Henry  Mackenzie,  Christopher  North,  who  has  written  a 
book  of  charming  idyls  on  the  craft;  Chantrey,  the  sculp 
tor  ;  Emmerson,  the  geometrician  ;  Rennie,  the  zoologist; 
Dr.  Bethune,  who  has  prefaced  an  edition  of  Walton's 
"Angler"  with  an  elaborate  and  learned  introduction, — 


ANGLING.  187 

and  other  notables  whom  we  have  not  time  to  name. 
That  Shakspeare  was  an  angler  we  have  no  positive  knowl 
edge,  but  cannot  doubt,  when  we  consider  the  apt  allusions 
to  the  craft  in  his  plays,  and  how  familiar  he  was  with 
all  sports,  from  liming  a  bird  to  stalking  a  deer.  As  we 
read  the  exclamation  of  Maria  on  the  approach  of  Malvolio: 
"  Here  comes  the  trout  that  must  be  caught  with  tickling," 
or  the  fine  passage  in  which  the  poet  contrasts-  fly-fishing 
with  bait-fishing, — 

"The  pleasantest  angling  is  to  see  the  fish 
Cut  with  his  golden  oars  the  silver  stream, 
And  greedily  devour  the  treacherous  bait. 
So  angle  we" — 

we  can  easily  fancy  him  strolling  along  the  banks  of  the 
beautiful  and  picturesque  Avon,  ever  and  anon  casting  his 
line  into  the  stream,  and  landing  a  trout  or  a  grayling 
on  the  greensward.  Walton  goes  so  far  as  to  claim  the 
prophet  Amos  as  a  fisher,  making  Piscator  observe  that 
"  he  that  shall  read  the  humble,  low,  plain  style  of  that 
prophet,  and  compare  it  with  the  high,  glorious,  eloquent 
style  of  the  prophet  Isaiah  (though  they  both  be  equally 
true)  may  easily  believe  Amos  to  be  not  only  a  shepherd, 
but  a  good-natured,  plain  fisherman ;  which  I  do  the  rather 
believe  by  comparing  the  affectionate,  loving,  lowly,  humble 
epistles  of  Saint  Peter,  Saint  James,  and  Saint  John,  who 
we  know  were  all  fishers,  with  the  glorious  language  and 
high  metaphors  of  Saint  Paul,  whom  we  may  believe  was 
not." 

The  eminent  statesman  of  Europe  and  America  often 
escapes  from  his  protocols  and  red-tape  to  recruit  his 
weary  brain  on  the  banks  of  the  trout-brook,  or  in  the 


188  AKGLIKG. 

company  of  the  king-fisher  and  the  heron.  What  elo 
quence,  statesmanship,  and  wise  legislation,  do  we  not 
owe  to  such  hours  of  recreation!  The  great  statesman 
of  Marshfield  found  his  best  escape  from  "carldng  care" 
in  fishing.  As  Starr  King  says,  "in  bait  and  debate  he 
was  equally  persuasive."  The  old  salt,  Peterson,  declared 
that  he  "  never  saw  anybody  so  smart  at  taking  a  trout 
from  his  hole";  and  after  doing  this,  or  hauling  a  blue- 
fish  through  the  surf,  Webster  would  turn  to  his  com 
panions  and  say:  "This  is  better  than  wasting  time  in 
the  Senate,  gentlemen."  It  was  in  fishing  for  trout  in 
Marshfield  that  he  composed  the  famous  passage  on  the 
surviving  veterans  of  the  battle  for  his  first  Bunker  Hill 
address.  He  would  pull  out  a  lusty  specimen,  it  is  said, 
shouting:  "Venerable  men,  you  have  come  down  to  us 
from  a  former  generation.  Heaven  has  bounteously  length 
ened  out  your  lives,  that  you  might  behold  this  joyous 
day."  He  would  unhook  them  into  his  basket,  declaim 
ing:  "You  are  gathered  to  your  fathers,  and  live  only 
to  your  country  in  her  grateful  remembrance  and  your 
own  bright  example."  In  his  boat,  fishing  for  a  cod,  he 
composed  or  rehearsed  the  passage  on  Lafayette,  when  he 
hooked  a  very  large  cod,  and,  as  he  pulled  his  nose  above 
water,  exclaimed:  "Welcome!  all  hail!  and  thrice  wel 
come,  citizen  of  two  hemispheres!" 

In  the  days  of  Greece  and  Rome  even  ladies  did  not 
disdain  to  angle  for  fish  as  well  as  men.  According  to 
Plutarch,  Cleopatra  was  a  votary  of  the  piscatory  art,  and 
so  keen  did  the  rivalry  become  between  her  and  Antony, 
that  he  resorted  to  the  meanest  artifices  to  insure  victory 
Mortified  and  irritated  by  the  queen's  superiority,  he  en 
gaged  divers  to  take  live  fish,  and  place  them  on  his 


ANGLING.  189 

hook.  This  was  done  so  expertly  that  he  pulled  up  fish 
after  fish  in  rapid  succession.  Learning  in  some  way  the 
secret  of  his  sudden  success,  she  pretended  to  congratu 
late  him  and  to  admire  his  dexterity,  at  the  same  time 
that  she  devised  a  cunning  means  of  revenge.  Another 
match  was  arranged,  and  the  fishing  began  in  the  pres 
ence  of  a  large  company  of  friends.  Antony  soon  had  a 
bite,  and  pulled  up  a  large  salted  fish,  to  his  great  dis 
gust,  and  amid  the  loud  laughter  of  all  present.  The 
secret  was  out;  Antony's  trick  was  exposed;  and  once 
more  woman's  wit  had  proved  too  much  for  man's  in 
genuity.  A  diver,  specially  instructed  by  the  queen,  had 
got  the  start  of  Antony's,  and  had  attached  the  salt  fish 
to  his  hook. 

In  England  fly-fishing  by  ladies  is  by  no  means  un 
common.  Not  long  since  the  London  "Field"  announced 
that  a  certain  beautiful  Miss  had  captured  a  salmon  weigh 
ing  seventeen  pounds,  a  statement  which  drew  from  a 
Cambridge  poet  the  following  impassioned  lines: 

"  Not  artificial  flies  my  fancy  took ; 
Nature's  own  magic  lured  me  to  yoor  hook; 
Play  me  no  more, —  no  thought  to  'scape  have  I, 
But  land  rne,  land  me,  at  your  feet  to  die." 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  American  ladies  may  more  gen 
erally  practice  this  "gentle  art,"  which  is  so  health-giving 
and  so  well  adapted  to  them.  When  they  shall  have  be 
come  as  expert  in  casting  a  fly  as  in  setting  their  nets 
for  beaux,  we  may  expect  that  their  husbands  will  have 
more  trout  and  fewer  pouts  for  their  dinners. 

Angling  in  our  ordinary  brooks  and  lakes  is  pleasant 
and  healthful,  but  to  enjoy  the  acme  of  this  earthly  feli- 


190  ANGLING. 

city,  one  should  go  to  the  mountain  brooks  and  streams 
of  Maine, —  those  running  into  Moosehead  Lake,  or  those 
that  connect  the  Rangeley  Lakes.  Here,  in  waters  of 
almost  icy  coldness,  surrounded  and  overhung  by  the 
dense  forest  through  whose  foliage  hardly  a  sunbeam 
penetrates,  are  real  brook  trout, —  leviathans,  compared 
with  which  those  caught  near  the  haunts  of  men  are  but 
minnows.  Choosing  some  quiet  pool,  into  which  the  brawl 
ing  waters,  after  tumbling  and  foaming  over  rocks,  pause 
for  a  few  moments  in  their  headlong  career,  you  glance 
down  into  the  glassy  water.  Shade  of  Walton!  what  a 
sight!  See  those  monarchs  of  the  brook  resting  motion 
less  upon  the  pebbly  bottom!  How  distinctly  they  reveal 
themselves  to  you  in  the  crystal  depths!  Now  move 
softly  with  cat-like  step,  get  ready  your  rod  and  reel, 
attach  your  fly  to  the  "  leader,"  and  drop  it  on  the  sur 
face  of  the  pool  as  softly  as  a  spider  drops  at  the  end  of 
his  self-spun  thread!  Hardly  does  it  touch  the  surface 
when  an  electrifying  jerk,  which  makes  your  heart  throb 
and  leap  into  your  very  throat,  tells  you  that  a  monster 
of  the  brook, —  a  triton  among  the  minnows, —  has  seized 
your  bait.  Presently  the  line  becomes  taut,  and  begins 
to  move  up  stream.  You  pull  gently  on  it,  when  the 
trout,  feeling  the  prick  of  the  hook,  darts  away  with  an 
arrow's  swiftness,  and  the  reel  spins  out  with  a  whiz 
like  that  of  a  spindle  in  a  cotton-mill.  Let  it  spin,  for 
he  is  so  big,  so  strong  and  so  tricky,  that  if  you  stop  it, 
it  will  snap  like  packthread.  Forty  yards  from  the 
starting-point  he  brings  up  under  a  submerged  stump, 
and  there  anchors.  Evidently  he  understands  the  laws 
of  mechanics,  for  he  takes  such  advantage  of  a  prong  of 
the  stump,  that  all  the  leverage  is  in  his  favor.  You 


ANGLING.  191 

might  as  well  pull  at  the  root  as  pull  at  him.  Byron 
says  of  one  of  his  languishing  beauties,  that  when  she 
cast  herself  upon  the  neck  of  Don  Juan,  "  there  she 
grew."  Well,  there,  between  the  arms  of  that  pine  stump, 
he  grows.  For  twenty  minutes,  that  seem  an  hour,  he 
sticks  and  hangs.  Suddenly,  just  as  you  begin  to  feel 
that  you  are  literally  stumped,  without  the  slightest  warn 
ing,  he  shoots  up  like  a  rocket  to  the  surface,  and  then 
begin  the  most  marvelous  series  of  acrobatic  feats  ever 
attempted  by  an  ichthyological  gymnast,  even  in  Maine. 
For  half  an  hour  more  he  leaps,  whirls,  darts,  flound 
ers,  dives,  dodges,  till,  at  last,  exhausted  by  his  desperate, 
super-piscine  efforts,  he  gives  up  the  struggle.  Trem 
bling  in  every  nerve  with  excitement,  you  tow  him  gently 
to  the  bank,  and  fearing  lest  he  should  even  now  give  a 
sudden  flop  into  the  stream,  you  "creel"  the  noble  victim, 
and  pause  to  gaze  on  your  prize.  There  he  lies  stretched 
out  in  the  basket,  "life's  fitful  fever  over/1 — an  eight- 
pounder,  almost  too  large  for  his  receptacle.  How  sym 
metrical  his  form!  How  brilliant  those  hues  of  orange 
and  crimson  and  gold,  on  his  sides;  how  deep  the  con 
trast  of  those  on  his  back;  and  how  bright  and  fresh- 
looking  the  white,  broad  belly  is!  Here  are  colors  and 
gradations  of  tint  which  mock  at  all  efforts  of  the 
painter's  art  to  imitate  them;  and,  as  you  feast  your 
eyes  upon  their  beauty,  it  seems  almost  profanation  to 
tickle  your  palate  with  such  a  dish, —  a  dish  "fit  for  the 
gods  "  only,  and  not  for  vulgar  epicures.  No  more  ang 
ling  that  day  for  you!  You  have  won  at  Waterloo,  and 
the  conquest  of  half-pounders  after  this  death-struggle 
with  Napoleon  would  be  tame. 

There  are  many  amusements  which  exact  patience  for 


192  ANGLING. 

their  enjoyment;  but  no  one,  perhaps,  makes  a  more  ex 
hausting  draught  on  this  virtue  than  angling.  Fish  are  very 
shy  and  very  capricious  creatures, —  hardly  less  than  were 
Eve's  daughters  before  this  age  of  "Woman's  Rights."  Like 
the  "gadders"  of  the  sex,  they  are  here,  there  and  every 
where  ;  you  have  first  to  find  where  they  are,  and  then  you 
must  coax  them  to  bite.  No  matter  how  deeply  you  may 
have  pondered  the  directions  of  old  Tzaak,  that  Hooker  of 
the  Piscatory  Polity,  you  cannot  sometimes,  with  the  utmost 
cunning,  tempt  them  from  their  hiding-places.  It  has 
been  said  that  no  man  should  ever  think  of  going  a-fish- 
ing  who  cannot  sit  all  day  in  a  hot  sun,  amid  swarms  of 
hungry  flies  and  mosquitoes,  with  his  feet,  if  need  be,  soak 
ing  in  cold  water,  and  be  content  after  all  that  time  with 
one  "  glorious  nibble."  To  achieve  the  angler's  ordinary 
successes  may  not  require  so  much  patience  as  he  pos 
sessed  who  baited  his  hook  with  "  a  dragon's  tail,"  and 
"sat  upon  a  rock  and  bobbed  for  a  whale";  but  the  fact 
is  certain  that  those  who  are  most  expert  in  fishing  are 
usually  endowed  with  a  large  share  of  that  stoicism  which 
bears  success  and  disappointment  with  the  same  evenness 
of  temper.  Old  Burton,  in  his  "  Anatomy  of  Melancholy," 
tells  of  a  Silesian  nobleman  who  was  found  booted  up  to 
the  groins,  as  he  stood  in  the  water  fishing;  and  he  adds 
that  "  many  gentlemen,  in  like  sort,  with  us,  will  wade  up 
to  the  arm-holes  on  such  occasions,  and  voluntarily  under 
take  that  to  satisfy  their  pleasure,  which  a  poor  man  for 
a  good  stipend  would  scarce  be  hired  to  undergo."  A 
late  English  writer  says:  "I  remember  a  fisherman  chid 
ing  me  on  account  of  my  displeasure  at  not  realizing  the 
sport  which  had  been  promised  ;  and  he  very  coolly  said 
that  '  I  should  never  make  an  angler,  if  I  could  not  fish 


ANGLING.  193 

a  whole  day  in  a  bucket  of  water,  without  showing  impa 
tience'  "  The  same  writer  tells  of  a  surgeon  at  Hampton, 
who  is  regarded  as  an  example  for  all  anglers  in  the  mani 
festation  of  this  quality,  as  he  braves  the  coldest  winter 
weather  to  pursue  his  favorite  sport.  "  He  gets  up  before 
it  is  light,  and  has  his  breakfast,  and  then  fishes  till  dark, 
while  the  water  is  freezing  on  his  line! "  That  is  angling 
like  a  true  votary  of  the  craft!  A  Scottish  writer  (the 
charming  author  of  "  Nugce  Criticce ")  tells  of  a  battle- 
royal  with  a  salmon  five  feet  long,  and  which  must  have 
weighed  fifty  pounds,  that  lasted  from  four  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon  till  four  o'clock  of  a  summer  morning.  Picture 
to  yourself,  if  you  can,  the  blank  feeling  of  dismay  which 
the  fisher  must  have  experienced,  when,  after  that  twelve 
hours'  tug  of  war,  his  line  "  came  in  loose,"  and  the  con 
viction  flashed  across  his  mind  that  the  monster  was 
off ! — ay, 

"turn  thy  complexion  there, 

Patience,  thou  young  and  rose-lipp'd  cherubin!" 

No  wonder  that,  in  view  of  all  these  facts,  many  a  theoretic 
angler,  who  has  been  charmed  into  a  love  of  the  amuse 
ment  by  the  witchery  of  Walton's  pages,  has  found  it  in 
practice  the  most  tedious  of  all  ways  of  killing  time. 

Honest  Izaak  justly  declares  that  "  he  that  hopes  to  be 
a  good  angler,  must  not  only  bring  an  inquiring,  search 
ing,  observing  wit,  but  he  must  bring  a  large  measure  of 
hope  and  patience,  and  a  love  and  propensity  to  the  art 
itself.1'  Markham,  in  his  "  Country  Contentments,"  goes 
still  further,  and  quaintly  assures  us  that  "  the  angler  must 
be  a  general  scholar,  and  seen  in  all  the  liberal  sciences; 
as  a  grammarian,  to  know  how  to  write  a  discourse  of  his 
9 


194  ANGLING. 

art,  and  in  true  and  fitting  terms.  He  should  have  sweet 
ness  of  speech,  to  entice  others  to  delight  in  an  exercise 
so  much  laudable.  He  should  have  strength  of  argument 
to  defend  and  maintain  his  profession  against  envy  and 
slander.  Then  he  must  be  strong  and  valiant,  neither  to 
be  amazed  with  storms,  nor  affrighted  with  thunder;  and 
if  he  is  not  temperate,  but  hath  a  gnawing  stomach  that 
will  not  endure  much  fasting,  but  must  observe  hours,  it 
troubleth  mind  and  body,  and  loseth  that  delight  which 
maketh  the  pastime  only  pleasing."  We  may  smile  at  this 
as  fanciful ;  but  it  must,  nevertheless,  be  acknowledged  that 
there  is,  at  least,  a  peculiar  knack  or  expertness  required 
to  make  one  a  proficient  in  this  mystery  or  craft, —  an 
art  a  genius  for  which,  like  that  for  painting  or  writing 
poetry,  must  be  born  in  a  man,  and  cannot  be  acquired. 
It  is  not  every  one  who  flourishes  the  lithe  rod  that  can 
send  the  feathered  line  sailing  high  in  the  air,  so  as  to 
alight  just  on  the  edge  of  an  eddy,  or  near  a  root  or 
stone,  where  "  the  hermit  trout  "  is  dreamily  plying  his 
bright  fins,  and  slowly  steering  himself  about  in  lazy  en 
joyment.  Nor  is  it  every  man  who  knows  how,  when  the 
graceful  creature  is  hooked,  to  rein  him  in, —  to  play  with 
him  as  a  cat  does  with  a  mouse, —  guiding  him  hither  and 
thither;  now  humoring  his  impetuous  leaps  and  dashes; 
now  tenderly  coaxing  him  to  the  shore,  and  finally  bring 
ing  him,  with  what  Horace  would  call  a  lene  tormentum, 
within  reach  of  the  gaff  or  landing-net.  No  ;  these  are 
triumphs  reserved  for  him  who  by  his  inborn  faculty,  added 
to  years  of  practice  of  his  craft,  is  able  to  "  snatch  a  grace 
beyond  the  reach  of  art," — the  veteran  angler. 

Had  Byron  ever  tried  to  grass  a  five-pound  trout  with 
'•  a  line  and  leader  as  delicate  as  the  finest  hair  from  the 


AXGLItfG.  195 

tresses  of  a  mountain  S}rlph,"  he  would  never  have  ridi 
culed  angling  as  "  the  coldest  and  stupidest  of  pretended 
sports."  A  cold  and  stupid  sport!  Could  there  be  a  more 
perfect  misnomer  for  a  craft  that  is  not  only  full  of  the 
most  varying  excitement,  but  exacts  the  utmost  intelli 
gence  and  adroitness, —  the  keenest  vigilance  and  the  most 
delicate  senses, —  an  eye  ever  quick,  and  a  hand  ever 
ready?  Did  a  "stupid"  fly-fisher  ever  waylay  and  cap 
ture  a  salmon,  or  cheat  the  vigilance  of  the  argus-eyed 
trout  that  startles  at  the  faintest  shadow?  The  angler's 
victories,  in  many  cases,  are  among  the  most  marvelous 
examples  of  the  triumph  of  art  over  brute  force.  They 
are  won  not  by  the  brutal  superiority  of  sheer  strength, 
but  by  instruments  formed  of  materials  so  slight,  and 
some  of  them  so  frail,  that  all  the  delicacy  and  cunning 
resources  which  human  wit  can  devise  are  required  to 
enable  feebleness  to  overcome  strength.  The  large,  power 
ful,  nervous  salmon,  "the  monarch,  of  the  stream,"  with 
all  his  wondrous  agility, —  the  quick-darting  trout,  active, 
hardy,  gamy,  whose  dying  struggles  show  an  unconquer 
able  spirit, —  are  hooked,  held  in,  wearied  out,  by  the 
skillful  and  delicate  management  of  tackle  which,  if 
roughly  handled,  would  be  bent  and  strained  by  the 
strength  and  weight  of  a  minnow!  "It  is  wonderful," 
says  a  writer,  "  to  see  hooks  of  Lilliputian  largeness,  gut 
finer  than  a  hair,  and  a  rod  some  of  whose  joints  are 
little  thicker  than  a  crow's  quill,  employed  in  the  cap 
ture  of  the  strongest  of  river  fish.  *  *  *  If  the  sporting- 
gear  of  the  fly-fisher  were  not  managed  with  consummate 
art, —  on  the  mathematical  principle  of  leverage, —  he  could 
not  by  its  means  lift  from  the  ground  more  than  a  mi 
nute  fraction  of  the  dead  weight  of  that  living,  bounding, 


196  ANGLING. 

rushing  fish  he  tires  unto  death,  nay  drowns  in  its  own 
element." 

Of  all  the  forms  of  amusement  which  human  wit  has 
devised  to  "  drive  dull  care  away,"  we  believe  there  is 
no  one  cheaper,  or  more  healthful  and  innocent  than  ang 
ling.  The  trout-fisher,  like  the  painter,  haunts  the  love 
liest  nooks  of  the  earth,  and  his  soul  takes  its  hue  from 
the  scenes  with  which  he  is  familiar.  Wandering  far 
away  from  the  dust  and  smoke  of  the  town,  into  the  quiet 
meadows  and  ravines,  he  follows  up  the  sparkling  brooks 
to  their  sources,  and  penetrates  to  the  inmost  recesses  of 
Nature's  sanctuaries.  He  has  admittance  to  her  boudoirs, 
and  dallies  with  her  in  her  most  witching  moods.  He 
becomes  familiar  with  the  ceaseless  changes  of  her  coun 
tenance,  varying  from  sunshine  to  tempest,  and  hears  all 
the  harmonies  of  her  organ-like  music.  As  he  throws  his 
line  where  "  rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round,"  the 
song  of  the  waters  drowns  all  the  jangling  noises  of  the 
world  he  has  left  behind,  and  while  he  listens  to  the  chorus 
of  the  wavelets,  the  sleepy  whirr  of  the  frog  in  the  pool, 
or  the  occasional  plash  of  the  trout  leaping  for  his  prey, 
the  misty,  dreamy  quiet  all  around  laps  his  soul  into  a 
temporary  Elysium.  The  shyest  and  most  delicate  wild- 
flowers,  set  in  the  golden  and  azure  mosses,  are  revealed 
to  his  gaze.  A  brooding,  meditative  spirit  takes  possession 
of  his  soul,  and  he  learns  to  discern  the  infinite  suggest- 
iveness  of  things.  He  worships,  not  in  temples  built  by 
human  hands,  but  in  the  temple  of  Nature, — 

"  Not  in  that  fane  where  crumbling  arch  and  column 
Attest  the  feebleness  of  mortal  hand, 
But  in  that  fane,  most  catholic  and  solemn, 
Which  God  hath  planned; 


ANGLING.  197 

"  In  that  cathedral,  boundless  as  our  wonder, 
"Whose  quenchless  lamps  the  sun  and  moon  supply, 
Its  choir  the  winds  and  waves,  its  organ  thunder, 
Its  dome  the  sky." 

Nor  is  his  enjoyment  limited  to  the  hours  when  he  sees 
the  scarlet-spots  flash  within  the  meshes.  He  stores  up 
in  his  memory  the  enchanting  sights  and  sounds  that 
ravish  his  eye  and  ear,  to  refresh  his  soul  amid  the  din 
and  dust  of  town  life;  and  the  green  fields,  the  songs  of 
the  birds,  the  "  bubbling  runnels "  leaping  through  ra 
vines  dark  with  the  shade  of  overhanging  foliage,  haunt 
him  like  a  passion.  Even  the  shadows  of  old  age  are 
illumined  by  the  recollection  of  these  oases  in  life's  sandy 
waste;  and  though  the  crow's  feet  may  have  crept  into 
his  eyes  and  the  gout  into  his  legs,  he  "  fights  his  battles 
over  again"  among  his  brothers  of  the  angle,  dwelling 
on  each  feat  of  piscatory  prowess  with  as  much  enthusi 
asm  as  if  he  had  captured  a  fortress  instead  of  a  fish. 

If  you  would  know  a  man's  character,  you  cannot  do 
better  than  go  a-fishing  with  him.  Does  he  crow  like 
chanticleer  when  he  has  caught  a  fish,  and  swear  like  a 
pirate  when  his  fly  has  caught  in  the  long  grass,  giving, 
perhaps,  a  violent  jerk  which  breaks  the  top-joint  of  his 
rod,  and  spoils  his  temper  for  the  whole  day?  Hie  niger 
est, —  hunc  tu,  Romane,  caveto!  Depend  upon  it,  he  will 
be  an  uncomfortable  companion;  you  will  find  him  inso 
lent  and  overbearing  in  prosperity,  sulky  and  savage  in 
misfortune.  Does  he,  after  losing  a  fine  fish  which  he  has 
raised  to  the  surface,  quietly  thrust  a  stick  into  the  ground 
opposite  the  spot  where  he  rose,  and  returning  fifteen  min 
utes  after,  again  throw  a  fly  and  capture  the  backslider? 
Such  a  man,  if  balked  in  a  love  affair  or  a  business  scheme 


198  ANGLTXG. 

just  on  the  eve  of  triumph,  will  await  patiently  a  second 
trial,  and  probably  win  the  prize  he  covets.  Does  he  pull 
out  his  fish  by  main  force,  and  impetuously  send  him  fly 
ing  over  his  head  into  the  grass  behind  or  into  a  thicket? 
We  can  easily  foresee  his  fate  in  life, —  that  he  will  do 
business  without  tact  or  finesse,  in  a  harem-scarem,  slap 
dash,  devil-may-care  way,  and  will  win  success,  if  at  all, 
at  the  cost  of  great  losses.  Does  he,  'after  twenty  minutes' 
vain  endeavor  to  ensnare  "  the  speckled  beauties,"  sprawl 
under  a  tree,  curse  the  weather,  the  fish,  his  tackle,  and 
his  luck,  and,  pulling  out  a  flask,  drown  his  vexations  in 
old  Rye  or  Bourbon?  He  will  be  easily  disheartened  in 
his  calling,  and  attributing  his  failures  always  to  ill  for 
tune,  never  to  his  own  impatience  or  want  of  tact  and 
skill,  will  soak  and  sulk"  himself  into  his  grave. 

There  are  some  sentimental  people  who  denounce  fish- 
catching  as  cruelty.  Leigh  Hunt  and  Byron  have  both 
condemned  it  on  this  account.  But  if  the  angler  is  cruel 
because  he  catches  the  fish,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  fish 
himself  who  starts  up  with  his  murderous  jaws,  and  tries 
to  swallow  what  he  fancies  to  be  a  fly?  Evidently  so  far 
as  the  intent  is  concerned  he  is  a  murderer,  only  he  is 
caught  while  trying  to  put  his  intent  into  execution.  It 
is  only  by  the  artful  imitation  of  the  flies,  upon  which  the 
trout  or  the  salmon  loves  to  feed,  that  the  angler  is  able 
to  capture  him.  Upon  opening  his  stomach,  you  find 
it  crammed  with  flies ;  or,  if  he  is  a  large  fish,  you  find 
that  he  has  banqueted  upon  smaller  ones.  In  fact,  the 
smaller  fish  live  in  a  constant  fright  on  account  of  him; 
they  fly  to  the  shallows,  hide  among  the  weeds,  and  dread 
him  as  a  lamb  dreads  a  wolf,  or  a  chicken  a  hen-hawk. 
The  big  fish  is,  in  fact,  a  perfect  cannibal, —  an  ogre;  the 


ANGLIKU.  199 

blood-thirsty  monster  will  devour  not  only  his  fellow,  but 
even  his  blood-relations  and  his  own  children.  It  was  this 
consideration  that  converted  Dr.  Franklin  from  vegetarian 
ism  to  belief  in  an  animal  diet.  "  If  you  eat  one  another," 
he  said  to  a  fish,  "  I  see  no  reason  why  we  may  not  eat 
you."  "  There  is  an  immense  trout  in  Loch  Awe,  in  Scot 
land,"  says  a  writer,  "  which  is  so  voracious,  and  swallows 
his  own  species  with  such  avidity,  that  he  has  obtained 
the  name  of  Salmo  ferox.  I  pull  about  this  unnatural 
monster  until  he  is  tired,  and  give  him  the  coup-de-grace. 
Is  this  cruelty?  Cruelty  should  be  made  of  sterner  stuff." 
It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  tender-hearted  moralists, 
who  croak  so  over  the  cruelty  of  angling,  and  think  it  a 
dreadful  thing  to  trouble  a  trout  with  a  line  intimating 
that  you  would  be  happy  to  see  him  at  supper,  rarely  refuse 
to  eat  a  perch  or  trout  well  browned,  and  will  even  add 
the  "cool  malignity"  of  salt  and  sauce.  To  all  such  crabbed 
and  hypercritical  objectors  we  can  only  say  with  Horace 
that  jubemus  stultos  esse  libenter,  while  from  our  heart  of 
hearts  we  echo  the  song  of  old  Izaak: 

"A  day  with  not  too  bright  a  beam, 

A  warm,  but  not  a  scorching  sun, 
A  southern  gale  to  curl  the  stream, 
And,  master,  half  your  work  is  done. 

"There,  whilst  behind  some  bush  we  wait 

The  scaly  people  to  betray, 
We'll  prove  it  just,  with  treacherous  bait, 
To  make  the  preying  trout  our  prey; — 

"And  think  ourselves,  in  such  an  hour, 

Happier  than  those,  though  not  so  high, 
Who,  like  leviathans,  devour 

Of  meaner  men  the  smaller  fry." 


INTELLECTUAL  PLAYFULNESS. 


THE  London  "  Saturday  Review,"  speaking  of  the  many 
pretty  things  said  in  play  by  Sydney  Smith,  re 
marks  that  none  of  the  sayings  of  that  obese  angel  of 
English  wits  throws  so  amiable  a  light  on  the  essential 
vein  of  his  intellect,  its  playfulness,  as  that  recorded  in 
the  story  of  the  pretty  girl  and  the  sweet  peas.  "  Oh ! 
Mr.  Smith,"  the  pretty  girl  said,  who  was  visiting  his 
garden  with  a  party  of  friends,  and  pointing  to  some  sweet 
peas,  "  those  sweet  peas  have  not  yet  come  to  perfection." 
"  Then,"  said  the  witty  divine  and  divine  wit,  "  permit 
me  to  conduct  perfection  to  the  sweet  peas."  At  first  blush 
this  looks  like  a  bit  of  gallantry,  of  which  any  man  might 
be  guilty;  but,  "  if  we  look  into  the  sentiment  closely," 
says  the  "Review,"  "and  observe  how  delicate  and  com 
plicated  is  its  structure,  and,  though  in  its  essence  spon 
taneous,  how  ideal  and  polished  is  its  wit,  the  gallantry 
falls  entirely  into  the  background,  iced  over,  as  it  were, 
by  the  playfulness,  and  by  the  intellectual  process  which 
almost  invariably  acts  as  a  refrigerator  on  the  emotions." 

Of  all  the  qualities  which  lend  a  charm  to  greatness, 
there  is  no  other, —  true  courtesy  only  excepted, —  which 
so  robes  it  in  beauty  as  the  one  here  indicated.  By  play 
fulness  is  meant  that  indescribable  something  "  which,  at 
particular  times,  surrounds  particular  people  like  an  elec 
tric  atmosphere,  which  gilds  their  thoughts,  lends  a  per 
fume  to  the  commonest  sentiments,  and  for  a  time,  trans- 


INTELLECTUAL   PLAYFULNESS.  201 

lates  those  who  fall  under  its  spell  into  a  kind  of  fairy 
land  remote  from  the  humdrum  views,  the  jog-trot  se 
quences,  the  little  carking  cares  and  little  drivelling  wor 
ries  and  apprehensions,  the  tiny  rules  and  infinitesimal 
points  of  honor,  which  almost  inevitably  beset  average 
life  at  average  moments."  This  quality  is  the  last  touch, 
the  finishing  perfection,  of  a  noble  character;  it  is  the 
gold  on  the  spire,  the  sunlight  on  the  cornfield,  the  smile 
on  the  cheek  of  the  noble  knight  lowering  his  sword- 
point  to  his  lady-love;  and  it  can  result  only  from  the 
truest  balance  and  harmony  of  soul.  The  best  and  great 
est  men  in  all  ages  have  exhibited  it;  it  was  seen  in  Soc 
rates,  in  Luther,  in  Cervantes,  in  Chaucer,  in  Sir  Thomas 
More  —  adding  a  bloom  to  the  sterner  graces  of  their 
characters,  and  shining  forth  with  amaranthine  bright 
ness  in  their  hours  of  darkness  and  gloom.  Why  is  it  so 
rare? 

Perhaps  one  reason  is,  that  the  quality  is  so  often  con 
founded  with  a  jesting  disposition  which  in  our  days  too 
often  is  found  in  excess,  and  allied  with  habitual  flip 
pancy  and  frivolity.  There  are  persons  who  cannot  speak 
of  the  most  serious  subjects  except  in  terms  provocative 
of  merriment.  The  gravest  themes  of  human  contem 
plation  suggest  to  them  only  comic  images  and  associa 
tions,  and  a  remark  as  gloomy  as  death  will,  in  passing 
through  their  minds,  acquire  the  mot-ley  livery  of  a  har 
lequin.  The  most  popular  literature  of  the  day  is  that 
which  is  dedicated  to  Momus  and  broad  grins.  The  re 
fined  and  delicate  humor  which  once  characterized  our 
classic  writers, —  a  humor  which  does  not  spring  from 
the  words  alone,  but  has  intense  meanings  underneath 
its  grotesque  sounds, —  has  given  place  to  "laughter  hold- 


202  INTELLECTUAL   PLAYFULNESS. 

ing  both  his  sides."  Joking  has  become  a  trade.  The 
cap  and  bells,  which  once,  like  greatness,  were  "  thrust 
upon1'  a  man,  because  he  had  a  genius  for  joking,  are 
now  assumed  with  cold-blooded  calculation.  We  have  had 
"  comic  histories "  of  England  and  Rome,  and  "  comic 
Blackstones"  ad  nauseam,  and  now  we  have  a  "Comic 
History  of  the  United  States."  In  England  the  rage  for 
burlesques  has  almost  banished  high  art  from  the  theatres; 
and  it  is  now  thought  to  be  a  fine  stroke  of  wit  to  call  the 
mightiest  of  English  writers  by  such  titles  as  "  the  Divine 
Williams,1'  or  "  the  Avon  party.1'  This  superfoetation  of 
fun  has  disgusted  many  with  all  fun.  They  feel  that  this 
incessant  rattle, —  this  ceaseless  jesting  upon  even  the 
gravest  themes, —  must  ultimately  lessen  a  man's  own 
sense  of  the  real  gravity  of  human  life,  and  weaken  the 
strength  and  authority  of  the  moral  convictions  of  those 
who  are  always  listening  to  it.  Barrow,  of  whom  it  has 
been  said  that  he  himself  might  have  outshone,  had  he 
chosen  to  do  it,  all  the  wits  of  Charles's  Court,  and  beaten 
them  with  weapons  like  their  own,  but  of  a  more  dazzling 
blade,  a  keener  edge,  and  finer  temper,  has  treated  this 
folly  with  the  contempt  it  merits.  "  What  more  plain 
nonsense  can  there  be,"  he  asks,  "  than  to  be  earnest  in 
jest,  to  be  continual  in  divertisement,  or  constant  in  pas 
time,  to  make  extravagance  all  our  play,  and  sauce  all 
our  diet?  Is  not  this  plainly  the  life  of  a  child,  that  is 
ever  busy,  yet  never  hath  anything  to  do?  or  the  life  of 
that  mimical  brute,  which  is  always  active  in  playing  un 
couth  and  unlucky  tricks,  which,  could  it  speak,  might 
surely  pass  well  for  a  professed  wit?"  It  is  plain  that 
those  who  find  their  delight  in  this  jibing  and  vulgarizing 
spirit  confound  true  humor  with  facetiousness.  The  one 


INTELLECTUAL    PLAYFULNESS.  203 

is  "  a  gracious  as  well  as  tricksy  spirit;"  the  other  is  often 
"  terribly  like  the  grinning  of  a  death's-head.1' 

There  is  another  class  of  persons  —  grim,  prosaic,  matter- 
of-fact  men — who,  owing  to  some  twist  of  the  brain,  can 
not  understand  the  quality  we  have  commended.  The 
language  of  pleasantry  is  to  them  an  unknown  tongue. 
Not  only  do  they  fail  to  detect  the  good  will  which  wears 
the  mask  of  satire,  but  it  is  lucky  if  they  do  not  interpret 
your  circuitous  compliments  as  direct  insults,  and  a  de 
sign  to  cheer  and  amuse  into  a  deliberate  intention  to 
sting  and  wound.  It  is  said  that  a  tribe  called  Weddahs 
has  lately  been  discovered  in  Ceylon,  who  never  laugh, 
and  who  know  no  more  what  a  joke  is  than  does  a  horse; 
and  even  in  civilized  countries  there  are  many  persons 
who  are  not  more  happy  in  their  mental  constitution. 
Sir  William  Harcourt  quotes  Canning  as  saying  of  the 
most  conservative  class  in  England:  "The  country  gentle 
men  suspected  wit  meant  something  against  the  land,  and 
solid  commercial  men  thought  it  had  a  tendency  to  de 
preciate  consols." 

We  have  known  some  of  these  people, —  lean,  lathy, 
crabbed,  dyspeptic  beings, — who  think  that  two  and  two 
always  make  four,  and  can  never  possibly  make  five;  and 
we  have  sometimes  thought  that  the  best  way  to  address 
them  would  be  to  abstain  from  all  irony,  and  to  roll 
into  their  spiny  natures  a  few  floods  of  billowy  mirth. 
It  was  one  of  these  hard,  prosaic  men,  who  cannot  under 
stand  a  joke  even  when  it  is  as  unequivocal  as  a  pistol- 
shot,  that  read  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York, 
and  said,  on  closing  it,  that  it  was  far  inferior  to  the 
works  of  Hildreth  and  Bancroft,  and  contained  many 
things  which  he  found  it  difficult  to  believe.  Miss  Cobbe, 


204  INTELLECTUAL    PLAYFULNESS. 

in  her  "  Work  and  Play,"  tells  of  an  Englishman  of  this 
stamp,  to  whom  a  friend  described  the  scene  when  Sheri 
dan  was  picked  up  dead  drunk,  and,  being  asked  his 
name  and  address,  stammered  out,  "  My  name  is  Wil-Wil- 
Wilberforce."  The  serious  gentleman,  after  a  few  mo 
ments'  deep  consideration,  looked  up  and  asked  his  fair  in 
formant,  "What  did  Sheridan  mean?"  Sydney  Smith  saw 
one  of  this  class  sitting  beside  him  at  a  dinner  party,  and 
plied  him  with  a  joke.  The  man  sat  grim  over  it  for 
some  five  minutes,  trying  to  extract  its  meaning.  At  last 
he  looked  up  and  exclaimed,  "  Why,  Mr.  Smith,  you  prob 
ably  intended  that  for  a  joke."  "I  didn't  intend  it  for 
anything  else,"  was  the  reply;  whereupon  the  solemn 
gentleman  began  to  laugh,  and  couldn't  stop,  doubtless 
discovering,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  that  things  have 
a  funny  side.  Many  will  remember  a  similar  misadven 
ture  which  befell  poor  Smith  when  he  told  a  lady  visitor 
that  he  found  the  weather  so  hot  he  was  actually  obliged 
to  take  off  his  flesh  and  sit  in  his  bones.  "  Oh!  Mr.  Smith," 
answered  the  lady,  in  consternation,  "how  could  you  do 
that?"  We  were  once  traveling  by  rail  along  the  left 
bank  of  the  Seine  in  France,  with  an  English  family,  and 
hearing  the  mother  ask  her  son  if  he  would  not  like  "  to 
go  in  swimming"  in  that  river,  we  said:  "It  is  not  pos 
sible  that  your  son  would  do  such  a  thing  as  that."  "  Why 
not?"  was  the  reply.  "Because,"  we  said,  "he  would  be 
crazy  if  he  did  it."  "Crazy?  how  crazy,  pray?"  "Why, 
madam,"  we  replied,  "he  would  be  in  Seine,  would  he 
not?"  "  H-o-w  i-n-s-a-n-e?"  she  asked,  with  a  mingled 
look  of  curiosity  and  surprise.  Natures  like  this,  that 
seem  so  poor  and  thin,  have  often  juice  enough  latent 
within  them;  but  as  some  one  has  said,  it  is  at  the  bot- 


INTELLECTUAL    PLAYFULNESS.  205 

torn,  and  undissolved.  It  needs  shaking  up,  in  order  to 
impart  richness  and  flavor  to  their  whole  being,  and  save 
them  from  bigotry  and  meanness;  and  if  you  can  once 
get  a  flood  of  humor  fairly  to  sweep  through  them,  the 
end  may  probably  be  gained. 

There  is  a  third  class  of  men  who  abstain  from  all 
exhibitions  of  playfulness  because  it  is  not  "  respectable." 
They  have,  or  think  they  have,  a  portentous  amount  of 
dignity,  and  are  fearful  of  sacrificing  the  most  infinitesimal 
portion  of  it.  Thomas  Fuller  knew  some  such  in  his  day, 
who,  "  for  fear  their  orations  should  giggle,  would  not  let 
them  smile."  It  is  evident  that  Dr.  Franklin  did  not  belong 
to  this  class,  since  we  are  told  that  the  drawing  up  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  would  have  been  committed  to 
him,  if  it  had  not  been  feared  that  he  would  "  put  a  joke 
into  it."  Nor  did  Abraham  Lincoln  belong  to  it,  whose 
memory  has  been  saved  from  a  taint  of  levity  only  by  his 
martyrdom.  William  Pitt  did  belong  to  it,  if  we  may 
believe  the  author  of  "  Caxtonia,"  who  says  that  he  rigidly 
subdued  his  native  faculty  of  wit,  from  motives  of  policy. 
It  was  not  that  he  did  not  appreciate  and  admire  its 
sparkles  in  orators  unrestrained  by  the  responsibilities  of 
office,  but  because  he  considered  that  a  man  in  the  position 
of  First  Minister  impairs  influence  and  authority  by  the 
cheers  which  transfer  his  reputation  from  his  rank  as 
Minister  to  his  renown  as  wit.  Doubtless  there  is  force 
in  this.  Grave  situations,  as  Bulwer  remarks,  are  not 
only  dignified  but  strengthened  by  that  gravity  of  de 
meanor  which  is  not  the  hypocrisy  of  the  would-be  wise, 
but  the  genuine  token  of  the  earnest  sense  of  responsi- 
iblity.  There  was  deep  wisdom  in  the  Athenian  law  which 
interdicted  a  judge  of  the  Areopagus  from  writing  a  comedy. 


206  INTELLECTUAL   PLAYFULNESS. 

Yet,  as  a  general  thing,  it  is  none  the  less  true  that,  as 
"there  is  beggary  in  the  love  that  can  be  reckoned," 
so  there  is  degradation  in  the  dignity  that  has  to  be  pre 
served.  If  one  has  the  real  article,  he  may  safely  leave 
it  to  take  care  of  itself;  and  if  he  has  not,  no  prodigal 
ity  of  starch,  or  snowdrift  of  white-linen  decency,  will 
supply  a  substitute.  Certainly,  there  can  be  no  greater 
mistake  than  to  associate  frivolity  of  character  with  sport- 
iveness.  We  are  not  to  suppose  that  the  elephant's  trunk 
is  incapable  of  felling  a  man  because  we  see  it  toying 
with  a  feather;  we  do  not  conclude  that  the  oak  wants 
stability  because  its  light  and  changeable  leaves  dance  to 
the  music  of  the  breeze;  nor  may  we  conclude  that  a 
man  wants  solidity  and  strength  of  mind  because  he  may 
be  occasionally  playful.  Yet,  somehow,  the  man  who 
goes  through  the  world  with  an  owl-like  solemnity  of  face 
is  always  thought  to  be  showing  a  deeper  sense  of  the 
meaning  of  life,  and  to  be  making  more  of  his  talents, 
than  the  elastic,  sunny,  playful  man.  There  are  persons 
who  would  ever  afterward  have  refused  to  credit  Sydney 
Smith  with  the  possession  of  sterling  intellectual  quali 
ties,  had  they  heard  his  pleasantry  about  "  a  giraffe  with 
a  sore  throat."  "  Fancy,"  he  said,  once,  sitting  quietly 
at  the  deanery  of  St.  Paul's  with  some  ladies,  when  he 
was  told  that  one  of  the  giraffes  at  the  Zoological  Gardens 
had  caught  a  cold, — "  fancy  a  giraffe  with  a  yard  of  sore 
throat!" 


A  PLEA  FOR  THE  ERRING. 


are  few  subjects  upon  which  men  are  so  likely 
-*-  to  err  in  forming  their  judgments  as  in  estimating 
the  degrees  of  guilt  involved  in  the  conduct  of  their  err 
ing  and  depraved  fellow  men.  Especially  is  this  the  case 
when  the  judgments  are  passed  upon  the  poor  and  the 
outcast, —  the  unhappy  persons  who  from  infancy  have 
lived  in  daily  communion  with  wretchedness  and  vice.  In 
spite  of  Canning's  sneer  at  the  nice  judge  who 

"  —  found  with  keen,  discriminating  sight, 
Black's  not  so  black,  nor  white  so  very  white," 

the  doctrine  thus  ridiculed  is  nevertheless  true  in  morals, 
if  not  in  physics;  and  not  to  recognize  it  is  to  incur  the 
risk  of  undue  harshness  in  our  estimates  of  our  fellow- 
men.  If  there  is  any  one  lesson  which  frequent  inter 
course  with  them  teaches,  it  is  the  folly  of  attempting 
nicely  to  classify  their  characters,  so  as  to  place  them  dis 
tinctly  among  the  sheep  or  the  goats.  Here  and  there  a 
man  is  found  who  is  almost  wholly  bad,  and  another  who 
is  almost  wholly  good;  but,  in  the  infinite  majority  of 
cases,  the  problem  is  so  complex  as  to  defy  all  our  powers 
of  analysis.  A  young  men's  debating  society  may  easily 
enough  resolve  that  some  famous  man  or  woman  was 
worthy  of  approbation  or  of  reprobation;  but  men  of  ex 
perience,  who  have  learned  the  infinite  complexity  of  hu 
man  nature,  know  that  a  just  judgment  of  human  beings 

207 


208  A    PLEA    FOR    THE    ERRIXG. 

is  not  to  be  packed  into  any  such  summary  formula.  Even 
in  judging  our  friends,  whom  we  see  daily,  we  make  the 
grossest  mistakes;  they  are  constantly  startling  us  by  acts 
which  show  us  how  little  we  know  of  the  fathomless  depths 
of  their  moral  being.  How,  then,  can  we  expect  to  judge 
accurately  of  those  who  are  utter  strangers  to  us,  and  by 
what  right  do  we  presume  to  place  them  irrevocably  in 
our  moral  pigeon-holes? 

It  is  difficult  to  say  how  far  in  our  judgments  of  the 
vilest  men, —  or  those  who  seem  to  be  such, —  allowance 
should  be  made  for  perplexing  circumstances,  for  tempta 
tions  which  we  have  never  experienced,  and  for  motives 
which  we  can  but  partially  analyze.  Certain  it  is  that 
they  who,  from  their  earliest  years,  have  lived  always  in 
affluence, —  who  have  never  known  the  cravings  of  a  hun 
ger  that  they  knew  not  how  to  satisfy, —  who  have  been 
supplied  with  a  constant  succession  of  innocent  pleasures 
to  relieve  the  monotony  of  life,  and  with  all  the  appli 
ances  of  art  to  cheat  pain  of  its  sting, —  have  but  a  faint 
conception  of  the  privations  and  anxieties,  the  irritating 
and  maddening  thoughts,  that  torture  the  victim  of  pov 
erty,  and  drive  him,  with  an  impulse  dreadfully  strong,  to 
deeds  of  darkness  and  blood.  Well  did  Maggie  Muckle- 
backet,  in  Scott's  novel,  retort  to  the  Laird  of  Monkbarns, 
when  he  expressed  a  hope  that  the  distilleries  would  never 
work  again:  "Ay,  it  is  easy  for  your  honor,  and  the  like 
o'  you  gentle  folks,  to  say  sae,  that  hae  stouth  and  routh, 
and  fire  and  fending,  and  meat  and  claith,  and  sit  dry  and 
canny  by  the  fireside  ;  but  an  ye  wanted  fire,  and  meat, 
and  dry  claise,  and  were  deeing  o'  cauld,  and  had  a  sair 
heart  into  the  bargain,  which  is  warst  ava,  wi'  just  tip- 
pence  in  your  nouch,  wadna  ye  be  glad  to  buy  a  dram 


A    PLEA    FOR   THE    ERRING.  209 

wi't,  to  be  eliding,  and  claise,  and  a  supper,  and  heart's 
ease  into  the  bargain,  till  the  morn's  morning?"  We  may 
not  admit  the  strict  logic  of  this  appeal,  for  the  dram  is 
too  often  the  cause,  as  well  as  the  effect,  of  the  absence 
of  fire,  and  meat,  and  heart's  ease;  but  the  fact  upon  which 
the  poly-petticoated  philosopher  insists  s^p  pathetically,  is 
unquestionably  a  key,  not  only  to  nine-tenths  of  the  vices, 
but  also  to  many  of  the  darkest  crimes,  that  stain  the 
annals  of  the  poor. 

Easy,  indeed,  is  it,  for  such  persons  as  Maggie  describes, 

—  those  for  whom  a  serene  and  quiet  life  has  been  pro 
vided  by  fortune, —  who  are  free  from  all  harassing  cares, 

—  their  livelier  and  more  errant  feelings  all  stilled  down 
into  torpidity, —  with  not  even  any  tastes  to  lead  astray, — 
nothing,  in  short,  to  do  but  to  live  a  life  of   substantial 
comfort  within  the  easy  bounds  which  worldly  wisdom  pre 
scribes, —  easy  is  it  for  all  these  sleek  and  well-fed  mem 
bers  of  the  venerable  corps  of  "  excessively  good  and  rig 
idly  righteous  people,"  as  Burns  calls  them, — 

"Whose  life  is  like  a  weal  gaun  mill, — 

Supplied  wi'  store  o'  water, 
The  heapet  happer's  ebbing  still, 
And  still  the  clap  plays  clatter," — 

to  abstain  from  vice  and  crime;  for  were  THEY  to  be  guilty 
of  the  outrageous  sins  of  the  distressed  and  tempted,  they 
would  be  monsters  indeed.  But,  before  such  sit  in  judg 
ment  on  their  fellow-men, 

"Their  donsie  tricks,  their  black  mistakes, 
Their  failings  and  mischances," 

or  boast  of  keeping  their  own  feet  within  the  prescribed 

bounds   of  virtue,   would   they  not  do  well  to  ask  them- 
9* 


210  A    PLEA    FOR   THE    ERRING. 

selves  how  many  inward  struggles  this  negative  merit  has 
cost  them,  or  whether  their  circumstances  were  not  such  as 
to  render  temptation  to  any  glaring  error  impossible? 

It  is  said  that  John  Bunyan,  seeing  a  drunkard  stag 
gering  along  the  street,  exclaimed,  "  There,  but  for  the 
grace  of  God,  goes  John  Bunyan!"  "Tolerance,"  says 
Goethe,  "  comes  with  age.  I  see  no  fault  committed  that 
I  myself  could  not  have  committed  at  some  time  or 
other."  Truly,  we  have  but  to  look  into  our  own  hearts 
to  find  the  germ  of  many  a  crime  which  only  our  more 
favored  circumstances  have  prevented  us  from  commit 
ting;  and  would  we  ponder  on  this  thought  with  a  wise 
humility,  it  might  teach  us,  not  to  palliate  or  excuse,  but 
"more  gently  to  scan  our  fellow  man," — to  judge  merci 
fully  of  the  sinner  while  we  hate  the  sin, —  and,  above 
all,  meekly  to  thank  God,  not  that  we  are  better  than 
other  men,  but  that  we,  too,  have  not  been  brought  into 
temptations  too  fiery  for  our  strength.  "  No  man,"  says 
the  large-hearted  poet,  Burns,  "  can  say  in  what  degree 
any  other  persons,  besides  himself,  can  be  with  strict 
justice  called  wicked.  Let  any  of  the  strictest  character 
for  regularity  of  conduct  among  us  examine  impartially 
how  many  vices  he  has  not  been  guilty  of,  not  from  any 
care  or  vigilance,  but  for  want  of  opportunity,  or  some 
accidental  circumstance  intervening;  how  many  of  the 
weaknesses  of  mankind  he  has  escaped  because  he  was 
out  of  the  line  of  such  temptation;  and  what  often,  if 
not  always,  weighs  more  than  all  the  rest,  how  much  he 
is  indebted  to  the  world's  good  opinion,  because  the  world 
does  not  know  all;  I  say,  any  man  who  can  thus  think, 
may  view  the  faults  and  crimes  of  mankind  around  him 
with  a  brother's  eye." 


A    PLEA    FOR   THE    ERRING.  211 

It  was  in  a  land  of  harsh  moralists,  and  in  an  age 
when  little  pity  was  shown  to  the  erring,  that  Burns 
wrote  these  words;  but,  though  in  these  days  a  great  ad 
vance  has  been  made,  it  is  doubtful  if  we  yet  have  suffi 
cient  sympathy  for  those  who  stray  from  the  paths  of 
virtue.  We  need  again  and  again  to  be  reminded  that 
the  bad  are  not  all  bad;  that  there  is  "  a  soul  of  goodness 
in  things  evil " ;  and  that  in  balancing  the  ledger  of  human 
conduct,  we  should  make  as  large  subtraction  from  the 
bad  man's  debit  side,  as  from  the  good  man's  credit  side, 
of  the  account.  Not  more  true  is  it  that  there  are  many 
"  mute,  inglorious  Miltons,"  or  "  village  Hampdens,"  whose 
lofty  intellectual  powers,  like  the  music  of  an  untouched 
instrument,  have  remained  dormant  for  the  want  of  cir 
cumstances  to  call  them  forth,  than  that  there  sleep  in 
the  breast  of  many  an  innocent  man  impulses  and  tend- 
ences  of  a  wicked  character,  which  need  but  the  breath 
of  occasion  to  start  them  into  a  giant  life.  The  pregnant 
story  of  Hazael  furnishes  not  the  only  instance  of  a 
nature  which,  in  ordinary  circumstances,  was  shocked  at 
the  very  imputation  of  wrong,  and  yet,  when  clothed 
with  despotic  authority,  exhibited  all  the  odious  features 
of  the  oppressor  and  the  tyrant.  "  Nature,"  says  the  sen 
tentious  Bacon,  "  may  be  buried  a  great  while,  and  yet 
revive  upon  the  occasion  or  temptation;  like  as  it  was 
with  yEsop's  damsel,  turned  from  a  cat  to  a  woman,  who 
sat  very  demurely  at  the  board's  end  till  a  mouse  ran 
before  her." 

It  is  a  striking  fact,  noted  by  Sir  Arthur  Helps,  that 
the  man  in  all  England  whose  duty  it  is  to  know  most 
about  crime,  has  been  heard  to  say  that  he  finds  more 
and  more  to  excuse  in  men,  and  thinks  better  of  human 


212  A    PLEA    FOR   THE    ERRING. 

nature,  even  after  tracking  it  through  the  most  perverse 
and  intolerable  courses.  It  is  the  man  who  has  seen  most 
of  his  fellows,  who  is  most  tolerant  of  his  fellow  man. 
In  the  great  Battle  of  Life,  we  may  see  many  a  fellow 
creature  fall  beneath  a  temptation  wThich  from  our  own 
shield  would  have  glanced  harmless;  but  let  us  reflect 
that,  though  we  might  have  been  adamant  to  this,  there 
are  a  thousand  other  darts  of  Satan,  better  suited  to  our 
natures,  by  which,  though  pressing  with  less  crushing 
force,  we  might  have  perished  without  a  struggle.  Only 
the  All-Seeing  Eye  can  discern  how  far  the  virtues  of 
any  one  are  owing  to  a  happy  temperament,  or  from 
how  many  vices  he  abstains,  not  from  any  care  or  vigi 
lance,  but,  as  Burns  says,  "  for  want  of  opportunity,  or 
some  accidental  circumstance  intervening.1' 

When  Henry  Martyn  was  in  college,  he  was  such  a 
slave  to  anger  that  he  one  day  hurled  a  knife  with  all  his 
force  at  a  fellow  student,  which  might  have  killed  or 
fearfully  mutilated  him,  had  it  not  missed  the  mark,  and 
stuck  in  the  wainscot  of  the  room,  "  Martyn,"  exclaimed 
his  friend,  in  consternation,  "  if  you  do  not  learn  to 
govern  your  temper,  you  will  one  day  be  hanged  for 
murder!1'  He  did  learn  to  govern  it;  became  meek  and 
humble;  won  high  honors  in  college;  went  to  India  as  a 
missionary;  distinguished  himself  as  a  linguist;  trans 
lated  the  Testament  into  several  languages;  and  died, 
after  doing  and  enduring  a  vast  deal  to  rescue  the  East 
from  the  darkness  of  Paganism.  What,  if  with  his  sensitive 
and  fiery  organism,  he  had  been  born  amid  the  squalor 
and  vice  of  St.  Giles?  Or,  who  can  say  what  Martin 
Luther  would  have  become,  if,  born  as  he  was  with  organs 
of  destructiveness  like  those  of  a  bull-dog,  he  had  not 


A    PLEA    FOR   THE   ERRING.  213 

been  led  by  his  religious  training  to  employ  his  destruc 
tive  energies  in  killing  error  instead  of  in  killing  human 
beings?  An  English  writer  was  so  struck  with  the  pro 
digious  energy,  the  native  feral  force,  of  Chalmers,  that 
he  declared  that  had  it  not  been  intellectualized  and  sancti 
fied,  it  would  have  made  him,  who  was  the  greatest  of 
orators,  the  strongest  of  ruffians,  a  mighty  murderer  upon 
the  earth.  On  the  other  hand,  who  does  not  remember 
that  even  Nero,  at  one  time  of  his  life,  could  lament  that 
he  knew  how  to  read  or  write,  when  called  on  to  sign  a 
death-warrant?  The  colliers  of  Bristol  had  been  noted 
for  ages  as  among  the  most  hardened  and  profligate  of 
beings,  till  Whitefield  touched  them  one  day  with  the 
wand  of  his  magic  eloquence.  Even  a  Nelly  Sykes,  amid 
the  grossest  degradation,  could  do  many  virtuous  actions; 
and  the  stern  Milton  has  said  that  "  it  was  from  the  rind 
of  one  apple  that  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  as  two 
twins  cleaving  together,  leaped  forth  into  the  world." 
Moderate  then,  0  thou  stern  moralist,  thy  harsh  and  un 
relenting  views  of  human  guilt:  — 

"  Still  mark  if  vice  or  nature  prompts  the  deed ; 
Still  mark  the  strong  temptation  and  the  need; 
On  pressing  want,  on  famine's  powerful  call, 
At  least  more  lenient  let  thy  justice  fall; 
For  him,  who,  lost  to  every  hope  of  life, 
Has  long  with  fortune  held  unequal  strife, 
Known  to  no  human  love,  no  human  care, 
The  friendless,  homeless  object  of  despair; 
For  the  poor  vagrant  feel,  while  he  complains, 
Nor  from  sad  freedom  send  to  sadder  chains. 
Alike  if  fortune  or  misfortune  brought 
Those  last  of  woes  his  evil  days  have  wrought; 
Believe,  with  social  mercy  and  with  me, 
Folly's  misfortune  in  the  first  degree." 


THE  SECRET  OF  LONGEVITY. 


T~S  it  not  surprising  that,  notwithstanding  all  that  has 
-•-  been  written  on  the  subject  of  longevity,  so  little  is 
really  known  of  the  causes  and  conditions  of  long  life  ?  A 
few  general  hints  may  be  gathered  from  the  records  of 
centenarians,  but  no  exact  or  satisfactory  knowledge.  Sir 
G.  C.  Lewis,  who  carefully  investigated  the  subject,  posi 
tively  denied  that  any  man  ever  reached  a  hundred  years, 
though  he  was  nearly  convinced  that  there  were  in  his 
day  some  authentic  cases  of  female  centenarianism.  His 
great  argument  for  his  position  was,  that  since  the  Chris 
tian  era  no  person  of  royal  or  noble  birth  has  been  alleged 
to  have  reached  the  magic  limit.  Just  as  the  giants  of 
antiquity,  seen  through  the  mist  and  fog  of  ages,  loom  up 
in  preternatural  proportions,  and  dwindle  as  we  draw  near 
the  light  of  modern  times,  so  the  lives  of  the  centenarians 
swell  or  diminish  in  length  as  we  advance  toward  or  recede 
from  the  prehistoric  times.  If  it  be  argued  that  kings 
and  nobles  have  been  exposed  to  greater  dangers  and 
more  exhausting  labors  than  other  men, —  that  the  cares 
of  state,  the  fierce  contentions  of  politics,  the  brain-work 
incident  to  tangled  affairs  and  court  cabals,  cut  short  their 
days, —  it  may  be  urged  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  higher 
the  rank,  the  greater  the  care  with  which  they  would  be 
nursed,  the  better  the  medical  attendance,  the  food,  air, 
clothing,  and  all  the  other  conditions  on  which  health  and 
longevity  are  supposed  to  depend.  It  must  be  admitted  that 

214 


THE    SECRET   OF    LONGEVITY.  215 

the  higher  a  man's  rank,  the  greater  is  the  chance  of  accu 
racy  in  respect  to  dates ;  and  that  if,  in  all  the  cases  which 
can  be  easily  attested,  centenarianism  has  been  found  to  be 
a  myth,  there  is,  at  least,  a  strong  presumption  against  the 
obscure  centenarians  who  grow  up  in  places  where  the 
system  of  registration  is  unknown,  and  where  skepticism 
is  less  common  than  credulity  and  love  for  the  marvelous. 
This  presumption,  however,  is  liable  to  be  rebutted  by 
facts;  and  we  think  they  exist  in  sufficient  abundance  not 
only  to  overthrow  it,  but  to  prove  centenarianism  beyond 
all  reasonable  doubt.  To  go  back  no  farther  than  the 
Romans,  Pliny  states,  from  the  record  of  a  census  taken 
during  the  reign  of  Vespasian, —  a  source  of  information 
entirely  trustworthy, —  that  there  were  living,  in  the  year 
76,  in  Italy,  in  the  district  between  the  Apennines  and 
the  Po,  124  persons  who  had  attained  to  the  age  of  100 
years  and  upward.  Three  of  them  had  lived  to  140. 
Haller  long  ago  declared  that  more  than  1,100  persons 
had  been  known  to  have  reached  to  various  ages  between 
100  and  169.  Thomas  Bailey's  book,  "Records  of  Longevity," 
published  in  1857,  contains  the  names  of  about  4,000  cen 
tenarians,  and  Dr.  Van  Oven  has  collected  notices  of  6,201. 
Of  the  latter  we  have  the  names,  country,  condition,  and 
date  of  death,  of  99  who  reached  the  age  of  130;  of  37 
who  lived  to  be  140  years  old  ;  of  11  who  reached  150; 
and  of  17  who  exceeded  a  century  and  a  half.  Henry 
Jenkins,  a  witness  in  an  English  court,  swore  to  a  hun 
dred  and  fifty  years'  memory,  and  died  at  169.  The 
Countess  of  Desmond,  of  whom  it  is  said  that 

"She  lived  to  much  more  than  a  hundred  and  ten, 
And  died  from  the  fall  of  a  cherry-tree  then," 

was  known  to  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  though  she  had  lived 


216  THE    SECRET    OF    LONGEVITY. 

in  the  time  of  Edward  the  Fourth.  Lord  Bacon  says  that 
she  cut  three  sets  of  teeth,  and  lived  to  the  age  of  140, — 
the  age  of  Galen.  Lord  Brougham  had  a  great-aunt  who 
died  in  1789  at  the  age  of  106.  Allen's  American  Bio 
graphical  Dictionary  gives  the  names  of  more  than  200 
centenarians.  Among  them  are  Abraham  Bogart,  who  died 
in  Tennessee,  in  1833,  at  the  age  of  118,  and  Francis  Age, 
who  died  in  Pennsylvania  in  1767,  aged  134.  Some  of 
our  readers  will  recall  Judge  Basil  Hamilton,  the  Kala- 
mazoo  centenarian,  who  died  a  few  years  ago  at  the  age 
of  103.  He  was  one  of  a  family  of  twenty-three  children, 
and  had  seventeen  of  his  own.  Mrs.  Peggy  Hatch  died  in 
November,  1878,  in  Waterville,  Maine,  at  the  age  of  ninety- 
nine  years  and  two  months.  Mrs.  Moses  Studley,  of  Bre 
men,  Maine,  is  said  to  be  nearly  106  years  old.  She  was 
born  May  25,  1774,  and  has  not  been  sick  for  three  years. 
According  to  the  records  of  the  town  of  York,  Maine, 
Stephen  Goodale,  who  died  recently  at  the  poor-house  of 
the  town,  lived  to  the  age  of  118.  He  was  a  native  of 
York,  and  had  spent  in  the  poor-house  forty-two  years. 
We  will  cite  but  two  cases  more,  which,  if  they  can  be 
credited,  are  among  the  most  extraordinary  on  record.  In 
January,  1865,  two  men  died, —  one  in  France,  and  the 
other  in  the  United  States, —  whose  united  ages  are  said 
to  have  reached  the  startling  number  of  two  hundred  and 
seventy  years!  The  former,  Antoine  Sauve,  a  native  of 
Normandy,  was  an  old  artillery  soldier,  who  attained  to 
the  age  of  130  years  ;  the  other,  Joseph  Crele,  who  was 
born  near  Detroit  in  1725,  died  at  Caledonia,  Wisconsin, 
at  the  age  of  140.  Sauv6's  father  fought  against  Marl- 
borough  at  Ramilies,  on  May  3,  1706,  and  his  elder  brother, 
Peter  Sauv£,  helped  Marshal  Saxe  to  gain  the  bloody  vie- 


THE    SECRET    OF    LONGEVITY.  217 

tory  of  Fontenoy  in  1745.  Crele  was  seven  years  old  at 
the  birth  of  Washington,  and  fifty  at  the  opening  of  the 
American  Revolution,  so  that  he  might  have  claimed  ex 
emption,  on  the  score  of  age,  from  military  service.  These 
cases,  taken  together,  however  incredible  some  of  them 
may  be,  seem  conclusive.  Granting  that  many  of  them 
are  not  sufficiently  authenticated,  yet  after  the  utmost  al 
lowance  has  been  made  for  errors,  misstatements,  and  wil 
ful  exaggerations,  enough  remain  to  establish  the  truth  of 
ultra-longevity,  even  to  many  years  over  a  century,  beyond 
all  rational  doubt. 

But  what  are  the  conditions  of  longevity,  so  far  as  we 
can  gather  them  from  the  known  cases?  Are  agricultural 
districts  more  favorable  than  manufacturing, —  the  fresh, 
open  country  than  the  crowded  city, —  mild  climates  than 
those  whose  skies  are  perpetually  scowling?  Statistics, 
well  authenticated  reports  on  sickness  and  mortality,  say 
no;  rural  districts  have,  at  most,  the  advantage  of  one  in 
two  hundred  deaths  above  city  districts,  and  one  in  five 
hundred  above  the  town.  Against  the  overcrowding,  the 
bad  air,  the  noise  and  excitement,  and  the  liability  to  acci 
dent,  in  the  cities,  are  set  the  better  water,  the  greater 
variety  of  food,  the  better  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  health, 
the  more  accessible  and  skillful  medical  aid, —  so  that  the 
advantages  and  disadvantages  are  nearly  balanced.  Hot 
climates  have  no  superiority  over  cold ;  China  is  more 
unhealthy  than  Norway,  Iceland,  or  Greenland.  Is  exer 
cise  a  vital  condition  of  longevity?  It  seems  not,  in  view 
of  the  fact  that  a  vicar  cited  by  the  London  Quarterly 
Review,  Rev.  William  Davies,  reached  105,  though  his  only 
exercise  for  the  last  thirty-five  years  was  to  slip  one  foot 
before  another  from  room  to  room.  Men  have  lived  a 
10 


218  THE    SECRET    OF    LONGEVITY. 

hundred  years  and  upward  who  only  taxed  their  physical 
powers  to  walk  a  hundred  yards  a  day,  from  house  to  office 
and  back.  Is  temperance,  or  total  abstinence  from  alcohol, 
essential?  The  best  answer  to  this  question  is  the  reply 
of  the  nonagenarian  to  the  teetotaler,  who,  hunting  for 
statistics  to  fortify  his  views,  asked  the  aged  man  the  secret 
of  his  long  life?  "I  have  heard,"  said  the  enemy  of  alco 
hol,  "that  you  have  been  very  regular  in  your  habits;  is 
it  so?"  The  patriarch  admitted  the  regularity,  but  added 
that  it  consisted  in  regularly  chewing  tobacco,  "  liquoring 
up  "  with  the  regularity  of  a  steam-engine,  and  regularly 
going  to  bed  drunk.  Some  of  the  toughest  constitutions, 
resembling  lignum-vitse  in  their  texture,  have  been  pos 
sessed  by  old  soakers  who  were  hardly  ever  sober  except 
when  they  were  drunk.  Daniel  Bull  M'Carthy,  of  Kerry, 
Ireland,  who  drank  freely  of  undiluted  rum  and  brandy 
during  the  last  seventy  years  of  his  life,  died  in  1752  at  the 
age  of  111.  George  Kirton,  of  Oxnop  Hall,  Yorkshire,  who 
died  in  1764,  aged  120,  was  also  a  hard  drinker.  William 
Hirst,  a  farm  laborer,  of  Micklefield,  Yorkshire,  who  died 
very  old  in  1853,  considered  rum  the  balm  of  his  life,  and 
spent  for  it  all  the  money  he  received  from  the  parish. 
Is  a  proper  diet  a  sine  qua  non  of  longevity?  All 
writers  on  health  denounce  newly  made,  and  especially 
hot,  bread,  and  not  a  few  discourage  the  use  of  tea  and 
coffee.  Yet  Mr.  Davies,  the  rector  of  whom  we  have 
spoken,  breakfasted  heartily  on  hot  rolls,  well  buttered,  ate 
hot  roast  meat  at  supper,  and  drank  wine  to  the  last, 
though  never  in  excess.  He  suffered  neither  from  gout, 
stone,  paralysis,  rheumatism,  nor  from  any  other  of  the 
besetting  diseases  of  old  age,  but  died  in  the  full  posses 
sion  of  all  his  faculties,  mental  and  physical,  but  his  eye- 


THE   SECRET   OF   LONGEVITY.  219 

sight.  "  Like  most  long  livers,  he  was  very  short  of  stat 
ure.11  Shall  we  declare  that  long  life  depends  on  "tub 
bing,"  or  personal  cleanliness?  What  shall  we  say,  then, 
of  the  case  of  "Lady"  Lewson,  an  eccentric  London  widow, 
who  reached  the  age  of  106,  though  she  was  a  mortal  foe 
to  cleanliness?  She  never  washed  her  rooms,  nor  bathed, 
declaring  that  people  who  did  the  latter  were  "  always 
catching  cold";  but  she  habitually  smeared  her  face  and 
neck  with  hog's  lard,  and  her  cheeks  with  rouge.  Eliza 
beth  Durieux,  a  woman  of  Savoy,  though  filthy  in  her 
habits,  reached  119;  and  it  is  affirmed  of  the  Icelanders, 
that  though  they  are  very  uncleanly,  and  suffer  much  from 
skin  diseases,  leprosy  in  particular,  their  average  longevity 
exceeds  that  of  the  continental  nations  of  Europe.  "But 
health,"  we  hear  some  one  say,  "is  surely  a  condition  of 
great  length  of  days."  Not  at  all.  Longevity  is  no  more 
dependent  upon  health  than  upon  great  muscularity.  The 
Tom  Hyers  and  Heenans,  the  great  prize-fighters  and 
heavy-weight  lifters,  men  of  brawny  muscles,  who  can  fell 
an  ox  with  their  fists,  are  almost  always  ailing,  and  rarely 
live  to  sixty  or  even  fifty.  The  late  Dr.  Winship,  of  Bos 
ton,  who  could  lift  three  thousand  pounds  weight,  died  at 
forty- two.  Lewis  Cornaro,  who  contrived  to  spin  out  the 
thread  of  existence  to  one  hundred,  had  so  sickly  a  con 
stitution,  and  indulged  in  such  excesses,  that,  when  thirty- 
five,  he  was  told  by  his  doctors  that  he  could  not  live  over 
two  years.  Changing  his  habits,  and  limiting  himself  to 
twelve  ounces  of  solid  food  a  day,  he  became  comparatively 
vigorous  and  hale;  and  he  tells  us  that  when  one  day  he 
took  fourteen  ounces  of  food,  and  two  extra  ounces  of  wine, 
the  addition  to  his  ordinary  allowance  nearly  cost  him  his 
life.  The  celebrated  Galen  had  a  weak  and  delicate  con- 


'JUO  'I'll  I',  si'.cKKT  OK   1,0 NCI  \  tTTt 

Slihlliitll.   yel     h\     strict    temperance    illld    CVCnUCSSo!'    temper, 

lived    on.-    hundred    ;NK|    forty    years.       II  is    rule    in    eating 

: » 

\\.i  I"  ii  <•  from  the  table  ;il\v;i\s  while  In.;  apprlile  \\;is 
unclo\  ed.  "The  three  oldest,  people  I  ever  knew,"  ;i\  ; 
Dr.  K.  Soul. hey  in  Hie  London  Lancet,  "\voinen  who  reached 
respectively  ei:;hl\  nine,  ninety  t'i.',hl,  and  one  hnndi'ed, 
\v«»ro  valetudinarians,  and  had  been  so  nearly  all  then- 
lives." 

In  spite  of  all  these  facts,  however,  ii,  is  hard  to  l>e- 
h'-ve  that  virtuous  habits,  abstemiousness,  exercise,  and 
cleanliness,  do  not  conduce  to  longevity.  l>ut  the  one 
llnii";  which  outweighs  all  other  l'a\'orable  circumstances, 
is  what  Sir  .lohn  Sinclair  calls  "art-Haiti  bodily  and  men 
tal  predisposition  to  longevity."  Thei-e  are  persons  who, 
as  Sir  Thomas  Hrowne  quaintly  says,  are  "  preli^ured  unto 
a  loii";  duration."  In  other  words,  they  have  a  i/t'niux  for 
it.  l^ilvc  any  other  t';ilt,  it  may  be  cultivated;  like  any 
other,  it  may  be  squandered;  but  it  exists  independently 
of  all  cult ivat ion,  and  no  care  can  supply  its  place*.  Those 
whit  have  this  ",ilt,  which  is  inherited,  will  commonly  roach 
old  a_";e,  thoii";h  they  trample  on  the  laws  of  health;  while 
those  who  have  it  not  \\ill  die  comparatively  early,  in  spite 
of  I  ho  utmost  regularity  of  life,  and  the  strictest  precau 
tions  against  disease.  Temperance,  sobriety,  and  industry, 
how  over  desirable  and  estimable,  thoii";h  they  will  proioii:-; 
exMence,  \\ill  nol  insure  to  tin*  latter  a  loii",  lilt',  because 
the\  lack  natural  strcii",lh  of  or";ani.'.at  ion ;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  I  hose  who  are  endowed  with  the  necessary  in 
herent  stamina  will  hold  out  in  spite  of  t  heir  excesses  and 
irregularities,  because.  thoii";h  they  draw  more  largely  on 
their  resources  than  the  others,  they  be^in  life  with  a  vast 
capital. 


•ni  !•;  SK<'I;]<:T  <>K   L<)N<;i<:\  ITY.  221 


of    tllO   most    :cn:  ililr  ;;i\in;-;;  oil    the  ;i.rl.  of    lolP'e  vity 

that  have  fallen  under  our  notice,  —  so  i';ir  as  longevity 
can  be  considered  attainable,  —  was  that  given  l>y  an  I  Lilian 

in  his  one  hundred  and  ;  i  xl  cent  li  year.  lleing  asked  the 
secret  of  his  liviii";  ;:<«  h»i.",',  he  replied  wil.li  tha.l  improvi 
sation  for  which  lii.:  roiinl  .rvnn-ii  ;i.n;  :;«>  nohul,  - 

"  \Vlirn   liiin.",ry,  ol'  UK-  ln-sl.   I   fill, 
And    dry    and    warm    I    keep   my    fee!,; 
I   screen   my   head   from  sun  and   ruin, 
Ami   let,  lew  e.aivs  perplex   my   bruin." 

In  Uie;;<-  linn:,  <•  ,|  >ee,ia,l  I  y  in  l,he  la,sl,  vvi^  ha.ye  Mm  (juini(!S- 
sence  of  all  I  he  a,<lvice  that  has  been,  or  can  bo,  given  on 

UKJ  suhjecl..  The  <lea,<lliesl,  foe  l,o  loii^iwily  is  excilrmnil, 
"To  live  lon^,1'  says  (!ieer<»,  u  ii,  is  neees.;a,ry  to  liv<;  slowly/' 
It  is  we.ll  known  in  Hie  ea,:;e  of  ordinary  machine:;,  IJiaf. 
no  (wohilioii  of  force  can  lake  place  wilh  iindnr  ra,|)idil,y 
wil.lioiil,  i|;iin;i.;ri!  l.o  I,  he  iiia.c.hino  in  which  l,he  l,i-;i,ii:;lornia- 
l.ion  takes  place.  Mxpre,;,;  mil  way  :;l<>ck,  for  e.xa,niple,  i;; 
worn  out  much  soonor  iha.n  thai  which  is  i-e-i-rvrd  for 
slower  ti'allic.  Tin;  la.w  is  univer;al  Ihal,  inlen::il,y  and 
<liir;i,l.ioii  <if  action  a,re  in  v(-r,:ely  proporfiona,!,  and  il,  ap 
plies  not  le  :  rigorously  to  the  hiiinaii  machino  than,  to 
a.ny  otJier.  Mvery  man  i;  Imrn  wil.li  a  ccrta.in  stock  of 
vitality,  whir.li  cannot  he  increased,  Ixil,  which  may  he  ex 
pended  or  IIM  haiid«''|,  as  In:  deem:;  IMV;!,.  Within  certa,in 
limil::  lie  ha.:  his  choice,  to  live  fa.sf  or  slow,  to  live  6X- 
!en:;ively  or  intensively,  to  draw  his  little  amount  of  life, 
over  a  l:ir;n-  s|»ace,  or  to  eondeii:;e  if  into  a,  narrower  one; 
hilt  when  hi;  slock  i,;  r.\li;i.u.;l,ed  In:  ha:;  no  more.  lie  who 
live:;  extensively,  who  avoid:  all  ::l  imii  la  nl  :  take;  li"lila,nd 
Agreeable  exercise,  never  ovortusks  himself,  indulges  no 


222  THE   SECKET   OF   LONGEVITY. 

exhausting  passions,  feeds  his  mind  and  heart  with  no 
exciting  material,  has  no  debilitating  pleasures,  lets  noth 
ing  ruffle  his  temper,  "keeps  his  accounts  with  God  and 
man  daily  squared  up," — is  sure,  if  he  has  a  good  organ 
ism,  to  spin  out  his  life,  barring  accidents,  to  the  longest 
limit  to  which  it  is  possible  to  attain;  while  he  who  lives 
intensely, —  who  feeds  on  highly  seasoned  food,  whether 
material  or  mental,  fatigues  his  body  or  brain  by  hard 
labor,  exposes  himself  to  inflammatory  diseases,  seeks  con 
tinual  excitement,  gives  loose  rein  to  his  passions,  frets  at 
every  trouble,  and  enjoys  little  repose, —  is  burning  the 
candle  at  both  ends,  and  is  sure  to  shorten  his  days.  Gen. 
James  Grant  Wilson,  in  his  sketch  of  the  poet  W.  C.  Bry 
ant's  life,  tells  us  that  when  he  asked  him  the  secret  of 
his  health  and  vigor  at  eighty  and  upward,  the  poet  re 
plied:  "It  is  all  summed  up  in  one  word, —  moderation. 
As  you  know,  I  am  a  moderate  eater  and  drinker,  mod 
erate  in  my  work,  as  well  as  in  my  pleasures."  Cornaro, 
of  whom  we  have  already  spoken,  was  similarly  temperate; 
he  ate  so  little,  at  last,  that  he  required  only  an  egg  a 
day.  On  the  other  hand,  how  many  a  young  man  squan 
ders  on  a  holiday  or  an  evening's  entertainment  an  amount 
of  nervous  energy  which  he  will  bitterly  feel  the  want  of 
when  he  is  fifty  or  sixty!  It  is  curious  but  true,  as  some 
writer  saj^s,  that  a  bottle  of  champagne  at  twenty  may  in 
tensify  the  rheumatism  at  threescore;  and  that  overtask 
ing  the  eye  at  fourteen  may  necessitate  spectacles  at  forty, 
instead  of  at  sixty. 

Even  warm  affections  are  prejudicial;  they  subject  the 
owner  to  constant  anxiety,  and  are  as  wearing  as  the  ex 
citement  produced  by  politics  or  gambling.  Nothing  is 
more  exhausting  than  anxiety  for  a  sick  wife  or  child,  or 


THE   SECRET   OF   LONGEVITY.  223 

nursing  a  friend  through  a  long  sickness,  unless,  as  an 
English  writer  cynically  says,  "  you  can  say  with  a  good 
conscience  that  you  don't  take  much  interest  in  the  result, 
and  that  you  can  put  him  out  of  your  mind,  and  retire 
calmly  to  rest  at  a  moment's  notice."  When  "  a  fine  old 
man"  was  mentioned  in  Swift's  presence,  he  exclaimed 
angrily,  but  with  too  much  truth:  "  There's  no  such  thing; 
if  his  head  or  heart  had  been  worth  anything,  they  would 
have  worn  him  out  long  ago."  In  the  same  spirit  Words 
worth,  who  lingered  on  till  he  was  eighty,  complains: 

"Oh,  but  the  good  die  first, 
And  we,  whose  hearts  are  dry  as  summer  dust, 
Burn  to  the  socket." 

The  poet  Rogers  was  a  striking  exception  to  Swift's  re 
mark  ;  at  least,  till  he  was  ninety  }Tears  old.  He  then 
gradually  dropped  into  that  state  which  makes  one  query 
whether  a  prolonged  life  be  a  blessing: 

"Omni 

Meinbrorum  damno  major  dementia,  quse  nee 
Nomina  servorum,  ncc  vultus  agnoscit  ainicum, 
Cum  queis  praeterita  ccenavit  nocte,  nee  illos 
Quos  genuit,  quos  eduxit." 

On  the  other  hand,  "  ugly"  people,  vulgarly  so-called,  often 
live  to  great  age,  because  they  know  nothing  of  the  wear 
and  tear  of  sympathy,  and  because  the  very  intensity  of 
their  ill-nature  shows  that  they  have  stamina. 

Again,  on  the  theory  that  our  pulse  is  to  beat  a  cer 
tain  definite  number  of  times,  and  that  every  instinct 
which  makes  it  beat  quicker  only  makes  the  candle  burn 
the  faster,  even  our  fine  enthusiasms,  if  they  exceed  a  gentle 
glow,  and  rise  into  brilliancy  or  intensity,  are  costly,  and 


224  THE    SECRET   OF    LONGEVITY. 

lessen  the  number  of  moments  we  have  to  live.  And  if 
this  be  so,  a  fortiori  how  wearing  must  be  the  difficulty 
of  brain-work,  the  toil  of  invention,  the  worry  of  leader 
ship,  the  responsibility  of  high  office,  the  severity  of  a  lofty 
ideal,  the  distraction  of  numerous  sympathies,  the  perplex 
ity  of  nice  judgment,  or  the  arduousness  of  any  great  vir 
tue!  How  few  men  learn,  till  it  is  too  late,  that  their 
intellectual  and  emotional  natures  are  subject  to  laws  as 
stringent  and  inflexible,  in  every  particular,  as  those  that 
regulate  their  bodily  functions?  How  few  clergymen,  law 
yers,  and  busy  men  on  'change  and  boards  of  trade,  real 
ize  that  the  dyspepsia,  in  any  of  its  protean  forms,  with 
which  they  may  be  afflicted,  and  which  is  leading  to  im 
paired  nutrition  or  structural  change,  is  the  direct  and 
inevitable  result  of  the  mental  strain, —  the  ceaseless  tur 
moil  of  brain, —  to  which  they  have  for  years  subjected 
themselves!  How  often  has  the  completion  of  a  fortune 
or  an  intellectual  masterpiece  been  followed  by  the  death 
of  the  business  man  or  the  master !  Some  years  ago 
a  gentleman  in  England  set  himself  to  ascertaining  the 
causes  of  the  premature  deaths  of  his  acquaintances  who 
had  been  cut  off  within  twelve  years.  Of  forty  individ 
uals  he  found  that  twenty  had  died  from  excessive  mental 
labor  or  excitement,  and  twelve  of  these  were  not  intel 
lectual  laborers,  but  men  of  the  world.  Sydenham  tells 
us  that  one  of  the  severest  fits  of  gout  he  ever  suffered 
from,  arose  from  great  mental  labor  undergone  in  com 
posing  his  treatise  on  that  disease. 

Providence  has  appointed  the  succession  of  labor  and 
rest,  by  the  alternation  of  day  and  night;  yet  how  many 
violate  this  beneficent  law  by  turning  night  into  day,  and 
day  into  night!  They  sleep  while  the  sun  is  shedding  his 


THE   SECKET   OF   LONGEVITY.  225 

life-giving  beams,  and  work  amid  the  deadly  influences  of 
darkness.  Many  who  are  scrupulous  not  to  toil  at  their 
callings  in  the  night-time,  yet  imagine  that  they  may  do 
a  full  day's  work,  and  afterward  with  impunity  spend  half 
or  quarter  of  a  night  in  charitable  labor,  or  in  the  pur 
suit  of  pleasure  or  knowledge.  But  nature  cannot  be  so 
cheated  or  outwitted.  Though  a  bounteous  giver,  she  is 
a  hard  bargainer,  and  never  remits  a  debt  or  forgives 
an  error.  Occasionally  she  lets  an  offender  escape  for  forty 
or  fifty  years  even,  but  she  is  evermore  "  shadowing  "  him, 
and,  hauling  him  up  at  last,  inflicts  her  penalty  just  when 
and  where  he  least  anticipates  it. 

While  all  excess  is  injurious,  it  must  not  be  inferred 
that  hard  brain-work  alone,  apart  from  other  causes,  tends 
to  shorten  life.  Mental  labor,  taken  by  itself,  apart  from 
griefs  and  fears,  from  forced  or  voluntary  stinting  of  the 
body's  needed  supply  of  exercise,  food  or  sleep,  and  the 
minds'  supply  of  social  intercourse,  rather  prolongs  life 
than  cuts  short  or  frays  its  thread.  Even  overwork  of 
the  brain  is  probably  far  less  injurious  than  underwork, 
"  that  rare  and  obscure  calamity  from  which  nobody  is 
supposed  to  suffer."  Nine-tenths  of  the  students  and  pro 
fessional  men  who  are  supposed  to  break  down  from  in 
tense  toil,  wear  their  brains  out,  not  by  repletion  of  study, 
but  by  the  privation  of  something  else.  It  is  not  the  brain- 
work  that  saps  the  strength  and  disorders  the  nerves,  but 
the  constant  and  willful  violation  of  the  laws  of  nature. 
It  is  well  known  to  college  officers  of  much  experience, 
that  the  chief  mortality  among  the  graduates  and  under 
graduates  is  not  in  the  ranks  of  the  workers,  but  of  the 
idlers  ;  not  among  the  conscientious  students,  but  among 
the  aimless,  the  lazy,  and  the  dissipated.  The  biographies 


226  THE   SECRET   OF   LONGEVITY. 

of  famous  intellectual  workers,  of  all  ages  and  countries, 
show  conclusively  that  devotion  to  mental  pursuits,  even 
of  the  severest  character,  by  those  who  are  accustomed  to 
them,  is  not  imcompatible  with  longevity.  Some  of  the 
hardest  toilers  of  the  brain  have  lived  long  lives,  termi 
nating  in  a  serene  and  cloudless  sunset. 

Lord  Brougham,  who  did  the  work  of  half-a-dozen  men, 
lived  eighty-nine  }rears.  Lord  Lyndhurst  wore  out  at 
ninety-one.  Epimenides,  the  seventh  of  the  wise  men,  is 
said  to  have  lived  to  one  hundred  and  fifty- four;  Hippoc 
rates,  a  prodigious  worker,  reached  ninety-nine.  Zeno,  the 
stoic,  killed  himself  at  ninety-eight.  Pythagoras,  Quintil- 
ian,  and  Juvenal,  reached  fourscore,  and  Chrysippus  died 
of  laughter  at  the  same  age.  Goethe  attained  to  his  eighty- 
second  year;  Corneille  and  Crabbe  each  to  seventy-eight; 
the  poet  Young  and  Dr.  Franklin  to  eighty-four  ;  Colley 
Gibber  to  eighty-six;  La  Fontaine  to  seventy-four;  Joanna 
Baillie  to  ninety;  Montgomery,  the  poet,  to  eighty- two; 
Sydney  Smith  to  seventy-six;  Hannah  More  to  eighty-eight; 
Sir  Isaac  Newton  to  eighty-five;  and  Humboldt  to  nearly 
eighty-six,  toiling  to  the  last  with  all  the  enthusiasm  of 
his  early  years.  Bentley,  Hobbes,  Parr,  Neander,  and 
Heyne,  reached  ages  between  seventy-eight  and  ninety-one. 
Rogers,  the  banker-poet,  attained  to  ninety- two;  Grote,  the 
banker-historian,  held  out  to  seventy-six.  Fontenelle, 
famed  for  his  universality,  lived  a  century,  and  when  asked 
at  the  close  of  his  long  and  brilliant  career  if  he  felt  pain, 
replied,  "I  only  feel  the  difficulty  of  existing."  As  he 
was  nearing  his  hundredth  year,  a  friend  who  was  ninety 
said  to  him:  "  Death,  I  think,  has  forgotten  us."  "  Hush!" 
said  Fontenelle,  putting  his  finger  to  his  lips;  "He  may 
overhear  us."  Lord  Chesterfield,  the  courtier,  orator,  and 


THE   SECEET   OF   LONGEVITY.  227 

wit, —  the  model  of  politeness,  and  the  oracle  of  taste, — 
gave  up  the  ghost  at  seventy-nine  with  the  characteristic 
remark,  "  Tyrawley  and  myself  have  been  dead  these  two 
years,  but  we  do  not  wish  it  to  be  known."  Dr.  Beard, 
of  New  York,  in  an  able  paper  on  the  "  Longevity  of  Brain- 
Workers,"  has  proved,  beyond  even  the  shadow  of  a  doubt, 
that  the  world's  hardest  workers,  so  far  from  being  short 
lived,  show  a  very  high  average  of  life, —  a  far  higher  aver 
age  than  the  world's  drones,  and  those  who  had  added 
nothing  to  its  accumulated  capital  of  happiness,  knowl 
edge,  goodness,  and  truth.  After  examining  the  age  at 
tained  by  five  hundred  of  the  most  eminent  men  in  his 
tory,  including  many  who,  like  Raphael,  Pascal,  Mozart, 
Byron,  and  Keats,  died  young,  he  found  the  average  age 
of  these  eminent  men  to  be  sixty-four  years  and  between 
two  and  three  months.  Even  of  these  long  livers,  it  is 
altogether  probable  that  not  a  few  might  have  materially 
lengthened  their  days  by  taking  more  exercise  and  sleep, 
and  by  economizing  more  carefully  their  expenditure  of 
intellectual  and  moral  energy. 

The  annual  necrologies  of  our  colleges  and  professional 
schools  yield  still  further  testimony  to  the  point  in  ques 
tion.  At  a  recent  commencement  of  Brown  University, 
it  was  found  that  of  thirty-one  graduates  who  had  died 
during  the  year,  and  many  of  whom  had  filled  eminent 
offices,  the  average  was  nearly  threescore  and  ten.  Of  the 
class  of  1826,  seven  of  which  met  to  celebrate  their  fiftieth 
anniversary,  it  was  found  that  twelve  of  the  twenty-eight 
who  graduated  were  still  living,  and  that  the  united  ages 
of  the  seven  present  exceeded  five  hundred.  Dr.  Madden 
justly  observes  that  "  every  pursuit  which  ennobles  the 
mind  has  a  tendency  to  invigorate  the  body,  and,  by  its 


228  THE   SECRET   OF   LONGEVITY. 

tranquillizing  influence,  to  add  to  the  duration  of  life." 
That  mental  application  is  one  of  the  most  effective  means 
of  relieving  bodily  pain,  and  that  it  is  especially  fitted  to 
soothe  the  ruffled  spirit,  and  to  mitigate  the  asperity  of 
corroding  anxiety  and  care,  is  known  to  every  scholar. 
When  Burton  found  that  his  health  and  mind  were  fail 
ing,  he  began  his  "  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,1'  a  marvel  of 
quaint,  out-of-the-way  learning,  and  spun  out  his  thread, 
—  cut  by  himself  at  last, —  to  sixty-four.  Cowper,  whose 
brains  were  "  lined  with  black,1'  as  Burton  would  say, 
cheated  them  of  their  melancholy  with  "  John  Gilpin  "  and 
the  "  Task,"  and  eked  out  his  threescore  and  ten.  Bacon, 
in  his  "  History  of  Life  and  Death,"  is  emphatic  in  de 
claring  the  religious  and  the  literary  to  be  among  the 
forms  of  life  the  most  conducive  to  longevity.  "  There 
are  in  this  kind  of  life"  (the  religious),  says  he,  "these 
things,  leisure,  admiration,  and  contemplation  of  heavenly 
things,  joys  not  sensual,  noble  hopes,  wholesome  fears,  sweet 
sorrows.  Lastly,  continual  renovations  by  observances, 
penances,  expiations,  all  of  which  are  very  powerful  to  the 
prolongation  of  life."  The  literary  life,  he  says,  "  is  led  in 
leisure,  and  in  those  thoughts  which,  seeing  that  they  are 
severed  from  the  affairs  of  the  world,  bite  not,  but  rather 
delight  through  their  variety  and  impertinency." 

It  is  not  the  severe  mental  pursuit,  but,  as  a  writer  in 
the  British  Quarterly  Review  truly  says,  the  pursuit  fol 
lowed  without  interest  that  weighs  down  the  most  elastic 
mind  and  wears  out  the  toughest  body.  "  It  is  the  weari 
some  music  lesson,  toiled  over  by  the  scholar  with  neither 
taste  nor  ear;  the  drudgery  of  committing  to  memory  long 
lists  of  names,  which  to  the  learner  are  only  names;  the 
prosing  geographical  lessons,  where  the  most  interesting 


THE    SECRET   OF    LONGEVITY.  229 

scenes  call  up  no  pictures  for  the  imagination  to  dwell 
upon;  the  historical  lecture  where,  instead  of  living  and 
breathing  men  and  women,  the  student  is  cheated  with 
the  mere  dry  bones  of  some  historical  epitome.  These 
constitute  '  hard  work,'  that  useless,  thankless  hard  work 
that  frets  and  injures  the  fine  texture  of  the  brain,  and 
which,  as  a  high  medical  authority  has  told  us,  is  the  case 
with  all  wearisome,  toilsome,  lengthened,  mental  labor." 

There  is  a  popular  notion,  which  has  long  been  deeply 
rooted,  that  precocity  of  intellectual  development  is  un 
favorable  to  longevity.  Dr.  Beard,  in  the  paper  to  which 
we  have  referred,  has  completely  exploded  this  doctrine. 
He  shows  conclusively  that,  as  a  rule,  a  brain  of  excep 
tional  force  is  united  to  a  constitution  of  exceptionally 
good  fibre,  and  that  precocity,  so  far  from  being  premon 
itory  of  early  death,  is  almost  always  a  mark  of  great 
talents,  and  usually,  therefore,  of  the  constitutional  strength 
of  brain  which  accompanies  great  talents.  Of  two  hun 
dred  and  thirteen  musical  prodigies,  whose  ages  had  been 
investigated  by  one  Winterburn,  whom  he  cites,  it  was 
found  that  the  average  age  at  death  was  fifty-eight,  while 
some  lived  to  one  hundred  and  three.  Of  the  five  hun 
dred  of  the  most  eminent  men  in  history,  whose  ages  Dr. 
Beard  examined,  as  we  have  previously  stated,  and  whose 
average  age  he  found  to  be  sixty-four  years  and  two  to 
three  months,  one  hundred  and  fifty  were  decidedly  pre 
cocious;  yet  of  these  precocious  men  of  genius  the  aver 
age  age  at  death  was  sixty-six  and  six  months;  that  is, — 
and  the  statement  will  startle  most  readers, — more  than  two 
years  higher  than  the  average  of  the  whole  five  hundred, 
and  three  years  higher  than  that  of  the  three  hundred  and 
fifty  who  were  not  precocious.  Three  of  the  most  preco- 


230  THE    SECRET    OF    LONGEVITY. 

cious  geniuses  of  our  day  were  Bishop  Thirlwall,  Macaulay, 
and  De  Quincey,  yet  they  lived  to  the  ages  respectively  of 
seventy-eight,  fifty-nine  and  seventy-four. 

Of  all  the  qualities  of  mind  that  conduce  to  longevity, 
none  are  more  vitally  essential  than  calmness  and  serenity 
of  temper,  and  their  concomitants,  cheerfulness  and  hope. 
It  was  long  ago  said  that  the  habit  of  looking  on  the 
bright  side  of  things  is  worth  more  than  a  thousand  pounds 
a  year.  "  To  be  free-minded,  and  cheerfully  disposed,  at 
hours  of  meat,  and  of  sleep,  and  of  exercises,"  says  Bacon, 
"  is  one  of  the  best  precepts  of  long  lasting."  Worry,  it 
is  well  known,  kills  more  men  than  the  toughest  work. 
Worry,  indeed,  is  the  converse  of  legitimate  work  ;  the 
one,  as  Dr.  Baird  says,  develops  force,  the  other  checks  its 
development,  and  wastes  what  already  exists.  It  is  a  truth 
which  few  realize,  that  every  fit  of  despondency  or  ennui, 
every  emotion  of  envy,  jealousy,  or  hate,  every  burst  of 
passion,  takes  just  so  much  out  of  our  fund  of  vital  force, 
and  tends,  therefore,  to  abbreviate  our  term  of  living. 
Unfortunately  many  persons,  such  as  the  speculator,  the 
railway  manager,  the  great  merchant,  follow  callings  the 
cares  and  vicissitudes  of  which  almost  necessitate  both 
worry  and  overwork.  Persons  who  vault  suddenly  into 
positions  for  which,  their  training  has  not  fitted  them, — 
especially  if  these  positions  involve  the  bearing  on  the 
mind  of  a  multiplicity  of  intricate  and  perplexing  details, 
—  are  peculiarly  liable  to  suffer  from  cerebral  overstrain, 
and  consequent  exhaustion,  and  mental  anxiety  and  gloom. 
Again,  worry  in  literary  and  artistic  callings,  where  the 
utmost  elaboration  and  the  nicest  finish  are  required  to 
success,  is  an  almost  necessary  incident  of  work.  If  a  man 
has  a  higher  ideal  of  the  kind  of  work  he  ought  to  do, 


THE   SECRET   OF   LONGEVITY.  231 

or  of  the  quantity  of  work  he  ought  to  do,  than  he  can 
possibly  hope  to  realize,  how  can  he  help  worrying  about 
the  result  when  he  foresees  that  it  must  inevitably  fall 
far  short  of  his  wishes? 

While  the  vices  tend  generally  to  shorten  life,  there  is 
one  exception,  namely,  avarice.  Nine  persons  out  of  every 
ten  probably  eat  double,  if  not  treble,  the  food  that  is  essen 
tial  to  robust  health,  and  the  excess  engenders  diseases 
which  induce  a  prematur£  old  age,  and  fill  many  of  its 
days  with  torment.  It  is  said  that  the  Arabs  of  the  desert 
are  vigorous  and  long-lived,  though  they  eat  but  four 
ounces  of  gum,  or  a  pint  of  earners  milk,  in  a  day;  and  the 
Indian  can  travel  from  fifty  to  eighty  miles  in  that  time 
with  only  a  few  ounces  of  parched  corn  for  his  nourish 
ment.  The  miser,  whom  the  epicure  despises  for  his  ab 
stemiousness,  is  really  putting  himself  in  precisely  the  con 
ditions  which  are  favorable  to  a  long  and  healthy  life. 
Keeping  regular  hours,  and  using  the  sunlight  instead  of 
gas  or  oil,  he  rests  and  works  in  periods  that  accord  with 
the  periodicity  of  nature;  economizing  in  his  expenditures, 
and  saving  from  his  income,  he  avoids  the  self-contempt 
and  worry  incident  to  penury;  and  dreading  all  risks,  he 
steers  clear  of  speculation,  gambling,  and  all  the  tempta 
tions  to  amass  riches  by  hazardous  means,  with  the  nervous 
excitement  and  violent  alternations  of  feeling  that  attend 
the  gambler's  gains  and  losses.  He  is  thus  not  only  less 
exposed  to  disease  than  other  men,  but  when  he  becomes  its 
victim  suffers  far  less  from  its  ravages,  and  more  quickly 
rallies  and  resumes  his  wonted  vigor. 

It  is  said  that  Lord  Palmerston,  being  asked  one  day  by 
a  friend  when  he  considered  a  man  to  be  in  the  prime  of 
life,  replied:  "  Seventy-nine.  But,"  he  added  with  a  play- 


232  THE   SECRET   OF   LONGEVITY. 

ful  smile,  "  as  I  have  just  entered  on  my  eightieth  year, 
perhaps  I  am  myself  a  little  past  it."  The  hereditary  legis 
lators  of  England,  thanks  to  their  freedom  from  "  carking 
cares,"  and  the  vigilance  with  which  in  the  evening  of  life 
they  have  treasured  their  ever-diminishing  vital  force,  have 
generally  lived  to  a  great  age.  Of  a  score  of  British  peers 
who  died  in  1859,  the  united  ages  of  sixteen  amounted  to 
1229,  an  average  of  almost  seventy-seven  years  to  each.  Of 
thirty-two  peers  who  died  in  1868,  two  died  between  fifty 
and  sixty  years  old,  eight  between  sixty  and  seventy,  thirteen 
between  seventy  and  eighty,  and  seven  above  eighty.  Two 
of  the  latter  reached  eighty-nine.  The  average  of  their 
combined  ages  was  seventy-one  and  three-eighths  years. 

Of  all  the  orders  of  society  no  other  one  is  so  dis 
tinguished  for  its  quiet  and  comfort,  and  for  its  exemption 
from  all  that  exhausts  the  vital  powers  as  that  of  the 
Quakers.  A  general  prosperity,  equally  removed  from 
greatness  on  the  one  hand,  and  poverty  and  embarrassment 
on  the  other,  shines  over  the  meek  heads  of  this  amiable 
and  gentle  sect,  who  have  often  been  the  first  to  exemplify 
in  their  lives  many  Christian  precepts  treated  as  only  theo 
retical  by  their  fellows.  And  what  is  the  result?  Statis 
tics  show  that  the  chance  of  life  enjoyed  by  this  tranquil 
race  is  nearly  twice  as  good  as  that  of  other  men,  thus  prov 
ing  that  it  is  the  pace  that  kills,  and  that  temperate  labors 
and  pleasures,  with  the  easy  temperament  that  throws 
off  care  like  rain-drops  from  a  duck's  back,  are,  next  to  a 
genius  for  longevity,  the  surest  passport  to  a  good  old  age. 

The  royal  moralist,  in  summing  up  the  advantages  of 
heavenly  wisdom,  tells  us  that  length  of  days  is  in  her  right 
hand,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  a  long  life,  if  it  be  virtu 
ously  and  happily  spent,  is  a  blessing  most  earnestly  to  be 


THE    SECRET   OF    LONGEVITY. 

coveted.     The   mere  lapse  of  years,  however,  is  not  life; 
"knowledge,  truth,  love,  beauty,  goodness,  faith,  alone  give 
vitality  to   the   mechanism   of   existence."     The  value   of 
time  is  purely  relative;  and  if  we  count  it  by  heart-beats, 
not  by  the  tickings  of  the  clock,  or  the  shadow  on  the  dial, 
—  if  "he  lives  longest,"  as  Bailey  says,  "who  knows  most, 
thinks  the  wisest,  acts  the  best,'1—  then  many  who  were  rich 
in  years  have  really  died  young,  while  others  whose  lives, 
measured  by  the  calendar,  were  cut  short  early,  have  been 
opulent  in  life.     Shakspeare,  who  died  at  fifty-two,  lived 
ten  times  as  long  as  poor  old  Parr,  who  could  boast  of  his 
one  hundred  and  forty  years;  Pascal,  who  crowded  into  his 
thirty-nine  years  the  thought  of  an  antediluvian  life,  was 
far  older  than  Antoine   Souve  at  a  hundred  and  thirty. 
Mere  old  age,  following  an  oyster-like  existence,  during 
which  one  has  droned  away  his  life  in  his  shell,  never  buf 
feting  the  waves   for  himself  or  others,  is  a  questionable 
blessing;  but  the  serene  old  age  which  is  secured  by  tem 
perance,  sobriety,  and  the  conquest  of  vicious  appetites  and 
passions,— the  long,  mellow  autumn  of  life,  in  which  are 
harvested   the   fruits   of   years   of  useful   toil, —  is   to   be 
coveted  and  striven  for  by  all.     In  the  words  of  an  old 

poet: 

"  It  is  not  growing  like  a  tree 

In  bulk  doth  make  man  better  be, 
Or  standing  long,  an  oak  three  hundred  year, 
To  fall  a  log  at  last,  dry,  bald  and  sere; 
A  lily  of  a  day 
Is  fairer  far  in  May. 
Although  it  fall  and  die  that  night, 
It  was  the  plant  and  flower  of  light. 
In  small  proportions  we  just  beauties  see, 
And  in  short  measures  life  may  perfect  be." 
10* 


THE  SEASON  OF  TRAVEL. 


A  BOUT  the  fourth  of  July  the  hot  weather  comes  sud- 
-"-  denly  upon  us,  sending  the  mercury  at  one  leap  to 
90,  and  thoughts  of  the  sea-shore,  the  country,  and  foreign 
lands,  begin  to  engross  men's  minds.  Through  the  open 
window  come  the  roar  of  the  street  and  the  scream  of 
the  locomotive,  suggesting,  the  one  the  boom  of  the  ocean, 
the  other  the  cool  breezes,  shady  nooks,  and  quiet  of  the 
inland  village.  The  counting-room,  the  shop,  and  the  office, 
have  suddenly  a  prison-like  look;  our  work  becomes  irk 
some  ;  the  air  seems  stifling ;  an  unaccountable  restlessness 
seizes  us,  and,  half  unconsciously,  we  find  ourselves  rush 
ing,  carpet-bag  in  hand,  to  the  railway  station,  as  if  not 
only  health,  but  life  itself,  depended  on  our  transporting 
ourselves  without  delay  to  the  mountain-top,  the  rushing 
stream,  or  the  open  sea  —  perhaps  to  some  foreign  land. 

There  is  something  almost  ludicrous  in  the  suddenness 
with  which,  at  this  season,  from  a  nation  of  intense  work 
ers,  thinking  only  of  money-making,  we  are  metamorphosed 
into  a  nation  of  travelers  ;  and  it  may  be  true  that,  as 
many  a  paterfamilias  grumbles,  locomotion  has  become  a 
mania  of  Americans.  "Traveling,""  says  Emerson,  "is  a 
fool's  paradise,"  and  no  doubt  we  may  expect  too  much 
from  it.  It  is  true,  as  the  Roman  satirist  declares,  that 
corroding  care  scales  the  brazen-beaked  galleys,  and  that 
no  exile  from  his  country  is  an  exile  from  himself;  or,  as 
the  Concord  philosopher  echoes,  that  we  may  pack  our 


THE    SEASON    OF   TRAVEL. 


235 


trunks,  embrace  our  friends,  embark  on  the  sea,  and  at 
last  wake  up  in  Naples;  yet  there  beside  us  is  the  stern 
fact,  the  sad  self,  unrelenting,  identical,  that  we  fled  from. 
Our  giant  goes  with  us  wherever  we  go.     Though  we  take 
to  ourselves  the  wings  of  the  morning,  and  fly  to  the  ut 
termost   parts  of  the  earth,  we  cannot  change  our  tem 
perament  or  constitution;  we  are  still  the  same  grumbling 
Jones  or  foolish  Brown;  we  cannot,  by  running  across  the 
sea,  run  away  from  our  proper  selves.     Yet,  if  we  cannot 
"reconstruct11  our  natures,  we  may  at   least   gain   intel 
lectual  expansion  by  travel;  and  therefore  the  man  of  in 
tellect  and  the  man  of  learning,  equally  with  the  coxcomb 
and  the  man  of  fashion,  will  always  delight  in  this  stirring 
idleness,  this  indolent  activity.    The  most  phlegmatic  minds 
are  stimulated   by  the   succession  of  novelties  it  affords; 
and  the  senses  never  hold  so  justifiable  a  sway  over  the 
intellect  as  when  they  are  indulged  with  the  stimulus  of 
perpetual  change,  and  banquet  upon  .a   kaleidoscopic  va 
riety  of  sights  and  scenes  under  the  plea  of  intellectual 
advantage. 

Aside  from  this,  it  is  unquestionably  a  good  thing  in 
itself  to  be  "knocked  about  in  the  world,"— not  forcibly 
propelled  by  the  application  of  others1  heels,  but  tossed 
about,  jolted  from  town  to  town,  from  continent  to  conti 
nent,— now  on  railroads,  now  on  steamboats,  and  anon  in 
buggy,  stage-coach,  diligence,  or  on  the  "  raging  canal,"- 
any°way  but  on  a  fence-rail  —  and  learning  to  bear  one's 
lot  ungrumblingly,  whatever  bed  or  board,  edibles  or  pota 
bles,  may  be  set  before  him.  Those  who  talk  of  travel  as 
a  mere  "  fashion "  forget  that  there  is  in  human  nature 
an  intense  craving  for  change.  The  more  intense  the  life 
we  live,  the  stronger  and  more  imperious  does  that  crav- 


236  THE    SEASON    OF   TRAVEL. 

ing  become.  Even  the  physical  organs  become  weary  at 
last  of  the  same  things;  the  lungs  always  breathing  the 
same  air,  the  stomach  always  taking  the  same  food,  the 
ears  always  hearing  the  same  sounds,  even  the  eyes  always 
resting  on  the  same  round  of  familiar  objects,  become  dis 
gusted,  lose  their  tone,  and  cry  out  for  change.  But  the 
mind,  even  more  than  the  body,  tires  of  the  mill-horse 
round.  The  brain,  like  the  stomach,  is  disgusted,  if  it  has 
always  the  same  work  to  do,  or  the  same  material  to  work 
upon.  The  nerves,  like  the  muscles,  grow  weary  of  same 
ness,  and  must  have  the  stress  of  labor  shifted,  and  the 
continuity  of  labor  broken. 

Arctic  explorers  tell  of  the  dreadful  persecution  of  per 
petual  daylight  in  the  six  months'  polar  day,  and  of  the 
terrible  depression  produced  by  perpetual  darkness  in  the 
six  months'  night.  But  scarcely  less  depressing  is  the 
effect  of  perpetual  work  amid  the  same  scenes,  with  no 
play  or  rest.  Life  is  a  balance  of  opposites,  health  is  their 
equipoise,  and  the  overbalance  of  either  is  disease.  Hence 
the  necessity  of  recreation  to  redress  the  injured  balance 
of  our  nature,  and  hence  the  absurdity  of  saying  that  it 
is  fashion  merely  which  drives  men  away  in  the  hot  months 
from  their  homes;  for  the  fashion  is  dictated  by  a  deep- 
lying  instinct,  and  originates  in  physical  and  intellectual 
need.  Camping  out  on  the  Adirondacks, —  trouting  in  the 
Lake  Superior  region,  or  at  Moosehead  Lake, —  climbing 
the  dizzy  heights  of  the  White  Mountains, —  yachting  and 
bathing  at  Newport, — journeying  on  foot  from  village  to 
village, —  making  flying  visits  to  the  Old  World, —  all  these 
modes  of  recreation  are  compensatory  and  health-restoring, 
and  are  worth  many  times  the  greenbacks  they  cost  to 
enjoy  them.  Travel  lifts  both  the  bodily  machine  and  the 


THE   SEASON    OF   TRAVEL.  237 

mental  out  of  the  rut  in  which  they  have  been  cabined, 
cribbed,  and  confined;  it  breaks  up  the  monotony  and 
stagnation  of  life;  it  vivifies  the  faculties  which  have  been 
long  suppressed,  and  out  of  the  scholar,  the  merchant,  or 
the  artisan,  reproduces  and  recreates  the  man.  It  emanci 
pates  the  student  from  the  books  over  which  he  has  pored 
too  long;  the  dealer  in  merchandise  or  stocks  from  the 
bondage  of  the  day-book  and  ledger;  the  clergyman  from 
his  musty  theology,  and  the  lawyer  from  the  bickerings 
of  Doe  and  Roe;  and  it  liberates  woman  from  those  petty 
and  monotonous  domestic  cares  which  tyrannize  over  her 
daily  life,  and  check  all  efforts  at  self-culture.  Especially 
to  those  who  have  reached  what  has  been  called  the  stag 
nation  period  of  life, — who  are  afflicted  with  the  maladie 
de  quarante  aws, —  is  this  specific  to  be  recommended. 
When  world-weariness,  sadness  of  heart  and  countenance, 
doubts  if  the  play  be  worth  the  candle,  and  all  the  feel 
ings  that  go  to  make  up  that  tedium  vitce  which  tempts 
so  many  to  shuffle  off  this  mortal  coil,  seize  upon  us,  and 
all  the  uses  of  the  world  seem  stale,  flat  and  unprofitable, 
then  is  the  time  to  jump,  carpet-bag  in  hand,  on  board 
the  railway  car  or  steamer,  to  cut  all  the  ties  that  bind 
us  to  our  country,  calling  and  home,  and,  in  a  perfect 
vacation  from  accustomed  duties,  faces  and  aims,  to  give 
one's  self  up  to  the  novelties,  incidents  and  refreshings  of 
travel.  It  carries  the  soul,  as  another  has  said,  over  the 
dead-point  in  its  revolution;  it  gives  the  heart  time  to 
adjust  itself  to  a  new  order  of  circumstances,  to  take  a 
fresh  start,  with  new  and  higher  motives,  and  to  recover 
a  youth  and  a  goal  which  no  future  circumstances  can 
take  away  or  render  uninviting. 

But  it  is  chiefly  as  a  prescription  for  bigotry  and  preju- 


238  THE    SEASON   OF   TRAVEL. 

dice  that  travel,  and  especially  foreign  travel,  is  to  be 
commended.  No  doubt  there  are  many  persons  who  add 
little  to  their  stock  of  information  by  visiting  other  lands, 
—  men  whose  conversation  is  no  more  enriched  by  what 
they  see  abroad  than  was  Lord  Charlemont's,  of  whom 
Johnson  grumbled  that  he  never  but  once  had  heard  him 
talk  of  what  he  had  seen,  and  that  was  of  a  large  ser 
pent  in  one  of  the  Pyramids  of  Egypt.  If  a  man  has  no 
classical  or  historical  knowledge,  it  is  altogether  probable 
that  his  patriotism  will  not  gain  force  upon  the  plains  of 
Marathon,  and  that  his  piety  will  not  grow  warmer  among 
the  ruins  of  lona;  and  that  if  he  lacks  an  artistic  educa 
tion  or  a  cultivated  taste,  he  will  derive  no  more  benefit 
from  a  visit  to  the  Pitti  Palace,  the  Vatican,  or  the  Louvre, 
than  the  great  majority  of  the  well-dressed  mob  who 
lounge  there,  and  who  inwardly  regard  the  pictures  as 
a  bore.  But  though  it  is  too  true,  as  Tom  Hood  laments 
in  his  Ode  to  Rae  Wilson,  that 

"Alas! 
Some  minds  improve  by  travel, —  others  rather 

Resemble  copper  wire  or  brass, 
Which  gets  the  narrower  by  going  farther," 

yet  this  proves  only  that  the  eye  sees  what  it  brings  the 
means  of  seeing,  and  that,  as  the  proverb  says,  he  that 
would  bring  home  the  wealth  of  the  Indies  must  carry 
out  the  wealth  of  the  Indies.  The  general  truth  remains, 
that  travel  brushes  away  the  contractedness,  shakes  off  the 
one-sidedness,  knocks  out  the  nonsense,  and  polishes  the 
manners  of  a  man,  more  effectually  than  any  other  agency. 
The  great  defect  of  your  chimney-corner  people  is,  that 
they  have  no  breadth  or  expansiveness  of  ideas, — no  knowl 
edge  of,  or  sympathy  with,  the  millions  of  their  race  out 


THE   SEASON   OF   TRAVEL.  239 

of  their  own  immediate  circle.  Hugging  perpetually  their 
own  firesides,  they  come  at  last  to  confound  what  is  acci 
dental  with  what  is  essential;  to  fancy  that  their  own  no 
tions,  tastes,  and  feelings,  are  inseparable  from  the  nature 
of  man.  Rabelais  has  felicitously  hit  off  this  whole  class 
of  persons  by  describing  them  as  persons  who  seem  as  if 
they  had  lived  all  their  lives  in  a  barrel,  and  only  looked 
out  at  the  bung-hole.  Going  abroad  and  ventilating  their 
ideas  among  strangers,  they  find  that  dogmas  which  they 
have  always  looked  upon  as  unquestionable,  because  they 
have  never  heard  them  questioned,  are  rejected  by  great 
and  enlightened  communities  ;  that  feelings  which  they 
had  thought  instinctive  to  the  race  are  unknown  to  whole 
nations ;  that  notions  and  opinions  which  have  excited 
their  contempt  or  horror  are  regarded  as  ennobling  and 
sublime  by  millions.  They  thus  lose  that  Chinese  cast  of 
mind,  that  stupid  contempt  for  everything  beyond  the  wall 
of  their  celestial  empire,  which  once  made  them  ridiculous. 
They  doubt  where  they  once  dogmatized ;  they  tolerate 
where  they  once  execrated.  New  associations  take  place 
among  their  ideas;  they  overhaul  the  old  rubbish  of  their 
opinions ;  bigotry  and  prejudice  are  exploded  ;  and  the 
whole  man,  perhaps,  undergoes  a  revolution  of  sentiments 
and  sympathies  as  complete  as  the  mutation  of  form  in 
certain  insects. 

For  these  reasons  we  rejoice  in  the  increasing  passion 
for  travel,  and  cry  "  lo  Triumphe!"  to  every  locomotive 
that  trails  its  murky  banner  along  the  air.  Foreigners 
may  smile  at  what  they  term  our  national  mania  for  loco 
motion, —  the  Bedouin  habits  of  our  people;  but  we  regard 
this  circulation,  this  vagabondizing  instinct,  this  ebb  and 
flow  of  the  masses  of  our  population  —  north,  south,  east 


240  THE   SEASON   OP   TRAVEL. 

and  west — as  the  very  life-tide  of  our  system.  Let  the 
sharp-witted,  speculative  Yankee,  and  the  impetuous  native 
of  the  South,  the  frank,  open-hearted  son  of  the  West,  and 
the  calm-minded,  dignified  inhabitant  of  the  Middle  States, 
jostle  freely  together,  giving  and  taking  the  peculiar  tastes, 
feelings  and  opinions  of  their  respective  communities,  and 
we  shall  have  no  fears  of  disunion  or  sectional  broils.  It 
is  ignorance  and  isolation  only  which  create  a  want  of 
sympathy;  and  no  American,  therefore,  should  consider  his 
education  as  complete  until  he  has  studied  geography  prac 
tically,  not  merely  by  scaling  the  dizzy  heights  of  Mont 
Blanc,  or  exploring  the  vales  of  Cashmere,  but  by  travel 
ing  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  that  mighty  country 
stretching  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  which  he  boasts 
as  "  his  own,  his  native  land." 


HOT-HOUSE  EDUCATION. 


rriHE  tendency  to  over-stimulate  the  mental  faculties  of 
-*-  the  young  in  this  country  has  been  often  rebuked  by 
the  press,  but  was  never,  we  think,  more  alarming  than 
now.  When  Mr.  Parton  visited  Chicago  some  time  since, 
to  write  his  article  on  that  city  for  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly," 
he  was  struck  with  the  general  excellence  of  our  public 
schools,  but  was  painfully  impressed  with  the  conviction 
that  they  were  intellectual,  hot-houses,  where  the  minds  of 
the  young  were  rapidly  developed,  but  developed  at  the 
expense  of  physical  vigor,  and  at  the  risk  of  ultimate 
weakness,  and  even  insanity.  But  Chicago  is  not  the  only 
city  where  the  young  are  educated  by  steam.  The  idea 
that  the  intellectual  growth  of  children  should  be  forced 
like  lettuces  in  hot-houses,  is  prevalent  all  over  the  country. 
East  and  West,  North  and  South,  there  is  a  rage  for  clever 
ness;  and  though,  like  the  pearl  in  the  oyster,  it  be  the 
result  of  disease,  it  is  yet  encouraged  and  applauded  even 
when  it  involves  the  ruin  of  both  the  physical  and  moral 
health.  The  "smart"  boy  is  incited  to  display  his  abilities 
before  admiring  visitors,  and  the  "smart"  girl  is  perched 
upon  a  music-stool  at  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age  to  play  a 
sonata  of  Beethoven.  In  a  New  York  paper  we  read  of  a 
little  girl  whose  parents  boast  that  she  is  so  absorbed  in 
her  school  lessons  that  she  says  them  over  nightly  in  her 
sleep.  The  town  of  Essex,  Massachusetts,  boasts  of  another 

11  241 


242  HOT-HOUSE   EDUCATION. 

infant  phenomenon,  which,  though  only  three  years  old, 
plays  over  three  hundred  pieces  on  the  piano.  At  a  Sun 
day  school  celebration  on  Long  Island,  where  prizes  were 
given  to  those  children  who  recited  from  memory  the  great 
est  number  of  verses  from  the  Bible,  a  little  pale-faced 
prodigy, —  a  girl  of  only  four  years  old, —  distanced  all  her 
rivals  by  repeating  one  hundred  and  eleven  verses  of  Mark's 
Gospel!  Englishmen,  it  is  said,  are  surprised  at  the  preco 
city  of  American  children,  and  the  variety  of  their  attain 
ments  at  an  early  age;  but  even  John  Bull  is  beginning  to 
copy  our  absurdities,  and  to  be  dissatisfied  unless  the  young 
travel  in  "lightning  express"  trains  along  the  railways  of 
knowledge.  An  English  editor  met  a  little  girl  going  to 
school  the  other  day,  who  had  work  enough  cut  out  for  a 
full-grown  Euclid.  Besides  lessons  in  orthography,  ety 
mology,  and  syntax,  she  had  others  to  learn  in  astronomy, 
belles-lettres,  music,  drawing,  and  political  economy,  with 
side  issues,  consisting  of  cardboard,  needle-work,  and  Ber 
lin  wool,  pictures  of  lemon-colored  sheep  kept  from  indigo 
lions  by  a  saffron-colored  shepherd, —  and  the  whole  to  be 
done  up  and  finished  in  three  hours! 

A  writer  in  Macmillan's  Magazine,  a  few  years  ago, 
spoke  of  four  cases  that  had  come  to  his  knowledge  of  girls 
seriously  injured  by  excessive  educational  cramming.  In 
one,  the  brain  was  utterly  unable  to  bear  the  burden  put 
upon  it,  and  the  pupil  was  removed  from  school  in  a  highly 
excitable  state;  in  another,  epileptic  fits  had  followed  the 
host  of  subjects  pressed  upon  the  scholar;  in  the  third,  the 
symptoms  of  brain  fog  had  become  so  obvious  that  the 
amount  of  schooling  had  been  greatly  reduced;  and  in  a 
fourth  fits  had  been  induced,  followed  by  complete  prostra 
tion  of  brain.  The  same  writer  quotes  from  a  work  by 


HOT-HOUSE   EDUCATION.  243 

Brudenell  Carter  on  "  The  Influence  of  Education  and 
Training  in  Preventing  Diseases  of  the  Nervous  System,"  a 
statement  that  there  is  a  large  public  school  in  London 
where  boys  from  ten  to  twelve  years  old  carry  home  tasks 
which  will  occupy  them  till  near  midnight,  and  where  the 
rules  and  laws  of  study  are  so  arranged  as  to  preclude  the 
possibility  of  sufficient  recreation.  Some  years  ago  the 
British  public  was  startled  by  the  suicides  of  young  men 
who  had  been  preparing  for  examination  at  the  University 
of  London.  As  if  the  cubic  capacity  of  the  British  skull 
were  annually  increasing,  new  studies  are  continually 
added  to  the  academic  curriculum,  which  exacts  an  amount 
of  labor  suited  only  to  a  matured  brain.  Facts  like  these 
are  alarming,  and  show  that  in  education,  as  in  everything 
else,  the  "  haste  that  makes  waste  "  is  the  great  curse  of 
modern  life.  Instead  of  following  the  course  which  nature 
dictates,  and  leaving  the  child  to  feel  its  own  powers,  and 
to  revel  in  infantile  wonder  at  the  objects  which  solicit  its 
gaze,  we  begin  at  once  to  worry  it  with  school-books,  and 
labor  with  might  and  main  to  make  it  "  a  useful  member 
of  society.1'  Before  the  age  of  four  we  begin  the  work  of 
oppressing  its  little  brain  with  an  incubus  of  technical 
terms  and  pedantic  phrases,  and  compel  it  to  acquire,  by 
painful  and  irksome  attention,  things  which  would  tax 
severely  the  intellect  of  an  adult.  At  seven  or  eight  it  is 
deep  in  the  mysteries  of  arithmetic,  grammar,  "  geography 
and  the  use  of  globes'1;  at  nine  or  ten  we  cram  it  with 
Greek  and  Latin ;  at  twelve  to  fourteen  it  vaults  into  Col 
lege  and  coat-tails;  and  at  seventeen  or  eighteen  has  been 
dragged  through  a  four-years'  course,  having  acquired  a 
smattering  of  everything,  with  a  thorough  knowledge  of 


244  HOT-HOUSE    EDUCATION. 

nothing,  and  having  finished  its  education  almost  before  it 
should  have  fairly  begun. 

Can  any  man  doubt  the  fatal  effects  of  such  a  process? 
Is  it  not  almost  sure  to  stunt  the  intellect,  to  exhaust 
prematurely  the  intellectual  energies,  and  thus  doom  the 
future  man  to  be  an  intellectual  dwarf  ?  We  hear  a  great 
hue  and  cry  about  "  the  educational  advantages  enjoyed  by 
children  in  our  day/'  But  in  what  do  these  boasted  privi 
leges  consist?  Is  it  in  the  fact  that  we  force  open  with 
hasiy  hand  the  37oung  and  tender  buds  of  mind;  that  we 
encourage  precocity  of  brain  at  the  cost  of  lasting  vigor; 
that  we  exhaust  the  mental  soil  by  crops  too  heavy  for  it? 
Should  we  consider  him  wise  who  would  endeavor  to  plant 
an  oak  in  a  flower-pot?  and  is  it  quite  sagacious  to  cloud 
the  open  brow  of  childhood  with  mannish  thoughts,  and  to 
shadow  with  worldly  wisdom  faces  which  "  should  not  have 
borne  this  aspect  yet  for  many  a  year?"  Let  the  intellec 
tual  stature  of  succeeding  generations  answer.  Let  the 
early  lives  of  all  men  who  have  astonished  the  world  by 
the  greatness  of  their  intellectual  endowments  answer. 
Let  the  scores  and  hundreds  of  men  answer  who  crawl 
along  through  life  prematurely  old, —  men  all  brain,  with 
no  bodies, —  mere  ghosts  or  phantoms  of  humanity,  who 
have  never  enjoyed  a  feeling  of  youtli,  and  whose  over-stimu 
lated  education  has  been  the  grave  of  their  healths,  pleas 
ures,  and  affections.  Oh!  that  doting  fathers  and  mothers, 
who  study  only  to  make  their  children  prodigies  of 
precocity,  would  take  a  lesson  from  Nature  !  —  she  who 
hides  the  germs  and  first  stirrings  of  all  life  in  darkness; 
who  is  always  forced,  yet  content,  to  begin  with  the  mi 
nutest  particles,  and  who  never  attempts  to  produce  any 
thing  great  except  by  slow  and  tedious  processes  of  growth 


HOT-HOUSE    EDUCATION.  245 

and  assimilation.  How  tardily  and  snail-like  she  crawls 
about  her  task  of  creating  anything  that  is  to  be  lasting  or 
valuable.  SHE  never  is  in  a  hurry,  or  does  anything  per 
saltum  —  in  a  day,  and  at  a  jerk,  as  it  were.  She  has  no 
steam-engine  processes,  or  science-made-easy  modes  of  op 
eration.  She  cannot  get  to  the  end  of  her  journey,  as  we 
can,  in  a  trice,  by  a  short  cut  or  royal  road  —  with  a  hop, 
skip  and  jump  only.  She  runs  up  no  oaks  in  a  year  or 
two,  nor  requires  less  than  ages  to  consummate  the  virtues 
of  her  diamonds.  It  takes  her  twenty  years  to  grow  a 
common  man,  a  thousand  to  grow  a  nation,  and  a  thousand 
more  to  grow  a  philosopher. 

Of  all  the  human  organs  the  brain  is  in  childhood  the 
most  delicate.  The  nervous  system,  the  source  of  all  vital 
energy,  predominates  in  youth,  and,  if  it  be  subjected  to  too 
severe  a  strain,  it  is  at  the  expense  of  the  other  parts  of  the 
body  at  the  very  time  when  the  greatest  amount  of  vital 
power  is  required,  and  when  nature  is  striving  to  perfect 
the  physical  system.  If  the  strain  be  long  continued,  the 
result  is  not  necessarily,  as  in  the  case  of  the  adult,  fatigue, 
which  may  be  readily  relieved  by  rest,  but  the  organ  itself 
yields,  and  its  efficiency  is  impaired.  There  "will  be,  as  in 
the  adult,  increased  circulation  and  activity  of  the  nutri 
tive  functions  of  the  brain;  but  "there  is  this  difference: 
that  the  brain  tissue  here  is  soft  and  yielding,  and,  instead 
of  offering  the  normal  resistance  to  the  abnormal  flux  of 
blood,  it  yields  to  the  pressure,  the  vessels  become  enlarged, 
perhaps  permanently,  and  congestion  is  the  result, —  pro 
ductive  not  only  of  serious  consequences  for  the  time  being, 
but,  by  the  very  fact  of  its  occurrence,  inducing  an  ever- 
increasing  liability  to  its  occurrence.  Then,  perhaps,  the 
overcharged  vessels  make  an  attempt  to  relieve  themselves 


246  HOT-HOUSE   EDUCATION". 

by  pouring  out  some  of  their  fluid  contents,  and  effusion 
into  the  ventricles,  or  on  the  surface  of  the  brain,  is  the 
consequence."  *  "  Mentally  speaking,1'  says  Dr.  George 
Moore,  "  those  who  bear  the  palm  in  severe  universities  are 
often  destroyed  by  the  effort  necessary  to  obtain  the  dis 
tinction.  Like  phosphorescent  insects,  their  brilliance  lasts 
but  a  little  while,  and  is  at  its  height  when  on  the  point  of 
being  extinguished  forever.  The  laurel  crown  is  commonly 
for  the  dead,  if  not  corporeally,  at  least  spiritually;  and 
those  who  attain  the  highest  honors  of  their  Alma  Mater 
are  generally  diseased  men." 

The  sooner  American  fathers  and  mothers  cease  to  pride 
themselves  on  the  ambition  and  intelligence  only  of  their 
children,  and  begin  to  exult  in  the  development  of  their 
limbs,  muscles,  and  solid  flesh,  the  better  will  it  be  for  the 
nation.  All  experience  shows  that  it  is  not  those  that  are 
hurried  the  fastest  over  the  first  steps  in  knowledge  that 
make  the  greatest  headway  in  after-life.  Many  a  person, 
by  having  his  mental  energy  prematurely  exhausted  in 
childhood,  has  been  doomed  to  be  an  intellectual  dwarf  all 
the  rest  of  his  days.  Teachers  who  overtax  their  pupils 
commit  the  old  mistake  of  fancying  that  suffering  which 
does  not  follow  on  the  heels  of  transgression  will  never 
come.  The  worst  effects  of  excessive  mental  labor  do  not 
always  appear  in  the  form  of  an  overt  mental  ailment,  but 
in  a  morbid  irritability  which  deprives  the  brain  of  its 
natural  elasticity,  and  of  its  power  to  endure  severe  and 
protracted  exertion.  It  is  true  that  children  who  are  kept 
from  school,  and  whose  brains  are  suffered  to  lie  fallow  for 
a  few  years,  do  not  gratify  the  vanity  of  their  parents  by 
their  precocity,  but  they  are  meanwhile  accumulating  such 

*  "A  Physician's  Problems."  By  Charles  Elam,  M.D.,  M.R.C.P. 


HOT-HOUSE    EDUCATION.  247 

an  amount  of  physical  and  mental  strength  as  will  enable 
them  to  advance  with  redoubled  impetus  hereafter.  Robust 
health,  rosy  cheeks,  well-developed  limbs,  and  lungs  that 
"  crow  like  chanticleer,"  and  make  the  air  ring  with  laugh 
ter  and  shouts,  and  now  and  then  screams,  are  far  surer 
indications  of  a  future  stalwart  intellect  than  all  the 
mental  feats  that  ever  delighted  a  father's  heart.  It  is  a 
well-established  fact  that  men  of  true  genius  have  often 
manifested  little  superiority  of  talent  in  childhood.  Great 
intellectual  power  is  frequently  tardy  in  its  development, 
and  often  there  is  a  seeming  sluggishness  or  obtuseness, 
during  their  early  years,  in  those  gifted  persons  that  subse 
quently  tower  a  head  and  shoulders  above  their  fellows. 
"  Give  me  the  plodding  student,"  Sir  Henry  Saville,  head 
master  of  Eton  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth  and  James,  used 
to  say;  "if  I  would  look  for  wits,  I  would  go  to  Newgate: 
there  be  wits."  Rousseau  somewhere  remarks  that  nothing 
is  more  difficult  than  to  discriminate  between  real  dullness 
in  children  and  that  apparent  and  fallacious  stupidity  which 
is  the  forerunner  of  great  abilities.  The  younger  Cato,  in 
his  infancy,  passed  for  an  idiot;  Goldsmith  was  dull  in 
youth;  the  school-master  of  the  brilliant  Richard  Brins- 
ley  Sheridan  pronounced  the  boy  "  an  incorrigible  dunce  " ; 
Chatterton  was  so  slow  at  learning  in  childhood  that  he 
was  sent  home  to  his  mother  as  "  a  fool,  of  whom  nothing 
could  be  made."  His  mother  was  equally  unsuccessful  in 
teaching  him ;  yet  he  afterward  learned  fast  enough  when 
he  began  the  task  of  self-culture.  Sir  Humphry  Davy 
declared  that  he  had  made  himself  what  he  was,  and  re 
joiced  in  after-life  that  he  was  allowed  to  be  so  idle  at 
school.  Robert  Burns  was  "  a  dour,  sulky  callan "  at 
school,  and  when  the  master  undertook  to  teach  the  pupils 


248  HOT-HOUSE    EDUCATION". 

a  little  sacred  music,  Burns's  ear  was  so  dull,  and  his  voice 
so  untunable,  that  he  could  not  frame  a  note,  and  he  was 
distanced  by  all  the  other  boys.  Dr.  Scott,  the  famous 
commentator,  when  twelve  years  old  could  hardly  com 
pose  a  correct  English  sentence.  Dr.  Adam  Clarke,  an 
other  celebrated  Biblical  commentator,  was  considered  a 
grievous  dunce  in  youth,  and  was  seldom  praised  by  his 
father  except  for  his  ability  to  roll  large  stones, — "  an 
ability,"  says  a  medical  writer,  "  which  I  conceive  a  parent 
should  be  prouder  to  have  his  son  possess,  previous  to  the 
age  of  seven  or  eight,  than  the  ability  to  recite  all  that  is 
contained  in  all  the  manuals,  magazines,  and  books  for 
infants  that  have  ever  been  published."  A  farmer  in  Wis 
consin,  who  had  been  a  school-boy  with  Charles  Dickens, 
was  asked  one  day  "if  he  was  bright. "  "  Not  at  all,"  was 
the  reply;  "  we  thought  the  one  who  died  down  there  in  Chi 
cago  was  by  far  the  brightest."  Sir  Walter  Scott  had  the 
credit  of  having  "  the  thickest  skull  in  the  school  "  when  he 
attended  the  High  School  in  Edinburgh,  and  disgusted  his 
kind  master  by  his  negligence  and  frivolity.  If  there  was 
any  "  bicker,"  however,  or  fight  with  the  boys  of  other 
schools,  "  Wattie  Scott"  was  sure  to  be  a  ringleader,  and  in 
the  very  thick  of  the  fray.  Even  at  the  University  he  did 
no  better,  and  went  by  the  nickname  of  "  The  Great  Block 
head."  His  bodily  powers,  however,  had  been  fully  de 
veloped  and  matured,  and  he  had  devoured  a  great  amount 
of  miscellaneous  reading-matter.  Even  Newton  ranked  low 
as  a  scholar  in  his  boyhood;  and  the  father  of  Isaac  Bar 
row,  Newton's  successor  at  Cambridge,  deemed  his  son  such 
a  marvel  of  stupidity,  that  he  used  to  say  that  if  it  pleased 
God  to  take  from  him  any  of  his  children,  he  hoped  it  might 
be  Isaac,  as  he  was  the  least  promising.  At  school  little 


HOT-HOUSE    EDUCATION.  249 

Isaac  was  noted  chiefly  for  his  love  for  fighting,  in  which 
he  got  many  a  bloody  nose.  Neither  Dryden  nor  Swift 
showed  talent  in  his  early  writings.  "  Indifferent  in  be 
havior,  and  of  doubtful  hope,"  was  scored  against  the  name 
of  Berzelius,  the  eminent  Swedish  chemist,  when  he  left 
school  for  the  university.  Liebig  was  distinguished  only 
as  a  "  booby  "  at  school;  and  when,  in  reply  to  the  sneering 
inquiry  what  he  proposed  to  become  since  he  was  so  dull  a 
scholar,  he  said  he  would  be  a  chemist,  the  whole  school 
burst  into  a  laugh  of  derision.  The  only  boy  in  the  school 
who  disputed  with  Liebig  the  title  of  "  booby "  was  one 
who  could  never  get  his  lesson  by  heart,  but  was  continu 
ally  composing  music  by  stealth,  and  whom  Liebig  found 
afterward  at  Vienna  to  be  distinguished  as  a  composer,  and 
conductor  of  the  Imperial  Opera  House.  Douglas  Jerrold 
was  dull  in  childhood,  and  could  hardly  read  at  nine. 
Generals  Grant  and  Sheridan  graduated  at  West  Point  low 
down  in  their  classes,  and  General  Washington  exhibited 
but  little  intellectual  power  in  his  youth. 

The  following  anecdote  is  told  of  a  pupil  of  General 
Salem  Towne,  of  Charlton,  Mass.,  who  was  a  teacher  in  the 
early  part  of  his  life,  and  who  died  a  few  years  ago  at  the 
age  of  ninety-two.  One  day  a  boy  was  brought  to  him,  of 
whom  the  account  given  was  that  he  was  so  incorrigible 
a  dunce,  that  none  of  his  masters  had  been  able  to  make 
anything  of  him  ;  and  he  was  brought  to  Mr.  Towne  as 
a  last  experiment,  before  apprenticing  him  to  a  mechanical 
trade.  The  next  morning  Mr.  Towne  proceeded  to  examine 
him,  preparatory  to  entering  upon  his  instruction.  At  the 
first  mistake  he  made  the  boy  dodged  on  one  side,  with 
every  sign  of  terror.  "Why  do  you  do  that?"  asked  the 
master.  "  Because  I  was  afraid  you  were  going  to  strike 


250  HOT-HOUSE    EDUCATION. 

me."  "Why  should  you  think  so?"  "Because  I  have 
always  been  struck  whenever  I  made  a  mistake."  "You 
need  never  fear  being  struck  by  me,"  said  Mr.  Towne. 
"  That  is  not  my  way  of  treating  boys  who  do  as  well  as 
they  can."  The  lad  very  soon  improved  rapidly  under 
this  new  treatment,  so  that  Mr.  Towne  advised  his  father 
to  give  him  a  liberal  education.  The  father  consented, 
and  William  L.  Marcy  became  a  lawyer,  judge,  governor, 
United  States  senator,  and  secretary  of  war  and  of  state. 

We  might  name  many  other  powerful  minds  that  were 
protected  in  childhood  from  injury  by  their  educators  by 
an  almost  preternatural  armor  of  stolidity;  but  these  will 
suffice.  Let  parents,  then,  not  be  in  a  hurry  to  develop 
their  children's  abilities,  as  the  consequences  may  be  fatal. 
"  If  a  parent,"  says  that  acute  medical  writer,  Dr.  Edward 
Johnson,  "  were  seen  urging  and  tempting  and  stimulating 
his  child  to  the  performance  of  an  amount  of  labor  with 
legs  and  arms,  sufficient  to  tax  the  health  and  strength 
of  a  full-grown  man,  all  the  world  would  say,  '  Shame 
upon  him!  he  will  cripple  his  child  with  excessive  work.' 
Yet  everybody  seems  to  think  that,  though  the  limbs  of 
children  cannot,  without  injury,  be  urged  and  tasked  to 
do  the  work  of  man's  limbs,  yet  that  their  brains  may  be 
tasked  to  any  degree  with  impunity.  What  is  there  in 
the  brain  and  its  powers  essentially  differing  from  the  leg? 
Nothing  whatever.  But  people  seem  to  look  upon  the 
brain  as  a  mystical,  magical  something  or  other,  which  is 
exempt  from  the  ordinary  laws  which  govern  all  the  other 
organs  of  the  body.  The  principal  business  of  a  child's 
limbs  is  to  grow  and  acquire  strength.  Thought,  reflection 
and  study  constitute  the  natural  work  of  man's  brain,  as 
plowing  and  sawing  are  the  work  of  a  man's  limbs." 


ORIGINALITY. 


DR.  SAMUEL  JOHNSON,  speaking  in  one  of  his  vigor 
ous  essays  of  the  baleful  effects  of  literary  envy  and 
jealousy,  says  that  "  one  of  the  most  common  is  the  charge 
of  plagiarism.  When  the  excellence  of  a  new  composition 
can  no  longer  be  contested,  and  malice  is  compelled  to 
give  way  to  the  unanimity  of  applause,  there  is  yet  this 
one  expedient  to  be  tried,  by  which  the  author  may  be 
degraded,  though  his  ivork  be  reverenced;  and  the  excel 
lence  which  we  cannot  obscure  may  be  set  at  such  a  dis 
tance  as  not  to  overpower  our  fainter  lustre.  Tins  accu 
sation  is  dangerous,  because,  even  while  it  is  false,  it  may 
sometimes  be  urged  with  probability  "  Charges  of  this  kind 
have  been  made  so  often  and  so  recklessly  of  late, —  so 
much  cheap  ridicule  has  been  expended  upon  literary 
"assimilation"  by  witlings,  who  know  of  no  way  of  using 
other  men's  ideas  except  by  filching  them  bodily, —  that 
it  may  be  worth  while  to  inquire  into  the  philosophy  of 
literary  creation.  Is  there  such  a  thing  as  originality, — 
pure  and  absolute  originality, —  in  letters?  Is  it,  or  is  it 
not,  still  true  that,  as  the  wise  man  proclaimed  twenty- 
eight  hundred  years  ago,  there  is  nothing  new  under  the 
sun?  Are  all  the  supposed  novelties  of  thought  that  de 
light  or  startle  us  in  the  works  of  the  day,  only  rehabili 
tations  of  old  ideas,  or  was  Chaucer  in  error  when  he 
sang, — 

251 


252  ORIGINALITY 

"  For  out  of  olde  feldes,  as  men  saith, 
Cometh  al  this  newe  corn  from  yeer  to  yere, 
And  out  of  olde  bokes,  in  good  faith, 
Cometh  al  this  newe  science  that  men  lere  "  ? 

The  answer  to  this*  question  depends  upon  the  precise 
meaning  we  attach  to  the  word  originality.  If  by  origi 
nality  we  mean  an  absolute  initiation  of  what  is  essentially 
new  in  science,  art,  action,  method,  or  application,  it  is 
pretty  certain  that  there  has  been  nothing  of  the  kind 
since  the  first  germs  of  thought  began  to  bud  and  blos 
som  in  the  prehistoric  ages.  The  germs  quickened  apace, 
and  multiplied  so  fast, —  the  intellectual  debts  from  man 
to  man  accumulated  so  rapidly, —  that  originality  became 
lost  in  antiquity.  If  we  examine  modern  works  of  fancy, 
we  shall  find  that  the  writers  have,  strictly  speaking, 
created  nothing  new;  they  have  only  recombined  old  ma 
terials,  or  given  new  wings  to  an  old  body.  As  our  very 
speech  has  sprung  from  roots  in  scores  of  dialects,  and  as 
our  modern  machines  have  their  roots  in  the  graves  of 
forgotten  inventors,  so  our  literature  has  blossomed  out 
of  a  boundless  antiquity.  Its  luxuriant  foliage  and  huge 
forest  growth,  which  now  so  gratefully  overshadow  us,  are 
"  rooted  in  strata  of  decaying  or  decayed  mind,  and  de 
rive  their  nourishment  from  them;  the  very  soil  we  turn 
is  the  loose  detritus  of  thought,  washed  down  to  us  through 
long  ages."  In  short,  we  are  all  our  fathers'  sons.  The 
wisdom  of  our  ancestors,  for  two  hundred  generations 
back,  runs  in  our  blood.  The  thought,  study  and  research 
of  a  million  of  our  predecessors  are  condensed  into  our 
mental  constitution.  All  the  ages  have  shared  in  making 
us  what  we  are.  The  wisdom  of  Moses  and  Solomon,  the 
glowing  fervor  of  David,  Ezekiel,  and  Isaiah,  the  sublime 


ORIGINALITY.  253 

pathos  of  Jeremiah,  the  speculations  of  Plato  and  Aristotle, 
the  winged  words  of  Homer,  the  vivida  vis  of  ^Eschylus 
and  Dante,  the  sterling  sense  of  Horace,  the  oceanic  genius 
of  Shakspeare,  the  profound  thought  of  Bacon,  Descartes, 
Kant,  Pascal,  Newton,  Leibnitz,  and  Kepler,  are  all  repre 
sented  in  the  fibre  of  our  brain  and  in  our  ideas.  Few 
educated  men  to-day  have  read  the  "Inferno";  fewer  still 
the  "Novum  Organum,"  or  the  "  Principia";  yet  who  can 
say  how  much  poorer  they  would  have  been  intellectually, 
had  Dante,  Bacon,  and  Newton,  never  lived,  or  had  they 
with  miser-like  selfishness  kept  their  thoughts  to  them 
selves  ! 

The  originality  which  some  critics  demand  is  simply  an 
impossibility.  To  attain  it,  a  writer  must  make  a  tabula 
rasa  of  his  brain;  he  must  place  himself  in  the  condition 
of  the  first  man,  and  ignore  all-  the  ideas  which  he  owes 
to  his  contemporaries  and  the  generations  before  him. 
Like  the  Greek  hero,  he  must  shut  his  eyes,  close  his  nos 
trils,  and  seal  his  ears  with  wax,  lest  he  catch  the  infec 
tion  of  other  men's  thought;  or,  better*  still,  he  should  be 
shut  up  from  childhood,  like  Miranda,  on  a  desert  island, 
with  no  companion  but  Caliban.  Unfortunately,  or  rather 
fortunately,  he  lives  in  the  great  ocean  of  human  thought, 
and  cannot,  if  he  would,  be  unaffected  by  its  contact.  He 
can  no  more  shut  himself  off  from  the  universal  life  than 
the  most  secluded  loch  or  bay  can  cease,  in  the  flooding  and 
ebbing  of  its  tiny  waters,  to  respond  to  the  great  tidal 
movements  of  the  ocean.  The  most  conscientious  writer, 
however  hard  he  may  strive  to  be  original,  is  compelled 
to  be,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  a  literary  resurrection 
ist.  His  brain  i.s  full  of  old  material  that  has  lost  its 
labels.  The  echoes  of  other  men's  wit  and  wisdom  linger 


254  ORIGINALITY. 

in  his  brain  long  after  he  has  forgotten  their  origin. 
Again,  all  the  topics  of  literature  have  been  exhausted, 
and  when  he  is  most  confident  of  having  hit  upon  a  new 
idea,  he  finds,  sooner  or  later,  that  he  was  anticipated  ages 
before,  and  has  only  changed  the  form  of  its  expression. 
Johnson  was  so  convinced  of  this  that  he  thought  of  com 
posing  a  work  "to  show  how  small  a  quantity  of  real 
fiction  there  is  in  the  world,  and  that  the  same  images, 
with  very  little  variation,  have  served  all  the  authors  who 
have  ever  written."  Piron  was  so  angry  because  his  pre 
decessors  had  forestalled  him,  and  robbed  him  in  advance 
of  all  his  ideas,  that  he  declared  he  would  do  as  they  did, 
and  forestall  his  descendants: 

"Malheur  aux  ecrivains  qui  viendront  aprfcs  moi!" 

Addison  and  Goldsmith,  each  in  his  turn,  felt  that  he 
had  come  at  the  eleventh  hour.  The  sickles  of  others  had 
already  reaped  the  full  crop  of  wisdom.  "  It  is  a  misfor 
tune,"  said  the  latter,  "  for  fine  writers  to  be  born  in  a. 
period  so  enlightened  as  ours.  The  harvest  of  wit  is 
gathered  in,  and  little  left  to  glean."  "  In  our  own  times," 
says  Jeffrey,  "  all  the  higher  walks  of  literature  have  been 
so  long  and  so  often  trodden  that  it  is  scarcely  possible  to 
keep  out  of  the  footsteps  of  some  of  our  precursors.  The 
ancients,  it  is  well  known,  have  stolen  most  of  our  bright 
thoughts,  and  not  only  visibly  beset  all  the  patent  ap 
proaches  to  glory,  but  swarm  in  such  ambushed  multitudes 
behind,  that  when  we  think  we  have  gone  fairly  beyond 
their  plagiarisms,  and  honestly  worked  out  an  original 
excellence  of  our  own,  up  starts  some  deep-read  antiquary 
and  makes  it  out,  much  to  his  own  satisfaction,  that  heaven 
knows  how  many  of  these  busybodies  have  been  before- 


ORIGINALITY.  255 

hand  with  us  in  the  genus  and  the  species  of  our  invention." 
In  a  similar  vein  the  Chevalier  de  Cailly,  two  hundred  years 
ago,  being  charged  with  stealing  from  the  ancients,  laughed 
at  their  pretensions: 

"Dis-je  quelque  chose  assez  belle! 
L'antiquitS  tout  en  cervelle 
Pretend  1'avoir  elite  avant  moi! 
C'est  ime  plaisante  clonzelle! 
Que  ne  venait  elle  apres  moi, 
J'aurais  dit  la  chose  avant  elle!" 

If,  therefore,  we  wish  to  know  whether  there  is  any 
originality  in  the  literature-  of  our  day,  we  shall  not  ask 
whether  its  materials  are  absolutely  new,  but  whether  they 
have  been  so  adapted  and  moulded  as  to  be  a  new  creation. 
Can  the  bee  make  honey  without  rifling  the  roses  of  their 
sweets?  Is  the  produce  of  the  apple-tree  less  original 
because  it  absorbs  the  juices  of  the  soil  and  the  balm  of 
the  air  before  it  draws  from  its  own  sap  the  life  that  swells 
out  the  trunk  and  gives  color  and  flavor  to  the  fruit?  Is 
the  rainbow  less  beautiful  because  it  borrows  its  colors 
from  the  sun?  Is  an  architect's  design  less  original  be 
cause  he  has  not  baked  every  brick  in  his  edifice?  Or  is  a 
Greek  or  Gothic  temple  a  plagiarism  because  the  acanthus 
leaf  may  have  suggested  the  capital  to  a  column,  or  a  vista 
through  forest  branches  the  idea  of  an  arch  or  an  aisle? 
The  essence  of  originality, —  of  the  only  originality  pos 
sible  in  our  day, —  is  not  the  invention  of  something  bizarre 
and  extraordinary,  but  the  vitalizing  of  materials  that 
already  exist,  and  which  are  common  to  all.  It  is  not  easy 
to  define  what  is  called  genius;  but  one  thing  is  certain, 
namely,  that  it  does  not  feed  on  itself  and  spin  cobwebs  out 
of  its  own  bowels,  which  would  only  keep  it  forever  impov- 


256  ORIGINALITY. 

erished  and  thin,  but  is  essentially  passive  and  receptive  in 
its  nature,  and  impregnates  itself  continually  with  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  of  others.  The  materials  upon  which 
it  is  to  act  must  be  gathered  from  without,  not  from  within; 
and  hence  the  ancients,  who  knew  that  the  human  mind 
can  create  nothing, —  that  the  best  part  of  genius  is  con 
stituted  of  recollections, —  called  Memory  the  mother  of 
the  Muses.  It  was,  apparently,  because  they  recognized  the 
truth  that  the  poet  must  despoil  all  the  fields  of  literature 
for  his  materials,  that  the  old  'Greek  mythologists,  whose 
most  fanciful  fables  often  concealed  the  profoundest  wis 
dom,  prefigured  the  idea  of  plagiarism  by  making  Mercury 
the  god  of  the  lyre  and  the  god  of  thieves.  So,  in  later 
times,  Lord  Bacon  held  memory  to  be  the  grand  source  of 
meditation  and  thought.  Buffon  declared  that  the  human 
mind  could  create  nothing,  but  merely  reproduce  from  ex 
perience  and  reflection;  that  knowledge  only,  or  what  the 
memory  retained,  was  the  germ  of  all  mental  products. 
Chateaubriand  averred  that  the  greatest  writers  have  put 
only  their  own  histories  into  their  works,  and  that  the  pro 
ductions  of  genius  are  composed  only  of  recollections. 

The  greatest  genius  that  ever  blazes  on  the  world  would 
soon  cease  to  illumine  it,  if  its  fire  were  not  ceaselessly 
fed  from  the  funded  thought  of  others.  Virgil  and  Dante, 
Milton  and  Shakspeare,  were  not  pure  inventors,  but  debt 
ors,  to  an  incalculable  extent,  to  the  thoughts  and  imag 
inings  of  the  army  of  lesser  poets  who  preceded  them. 
Before  they  struck  their  lyres  an  infinite  amount  of  labor 
had  been  done  which  they  had  assimilated  and  converted 
into  their  own  capital.  "  All  that  they  had  read,  as  well 
as  all  they  had  ever  seen,  went  into  the  mill;  and  what 
genius  did  was  to  turn  the  wheel  and  make  the  grain  into 


ORIGINALITY.  257 

flour."  Had  the  author  of  "Hamlet"  dwelt  always  in  a 
desert  island  he  could  not  have  written  the  least  of  his 
sonnets.  Even  Homer  himself,  the  fountain  of  imagery 
to  so  many  poets,  was  probably  no  exception  to  this  law. 
An  intelligent  writer  thinks  it  hard  to  believe  that  he  had 
no  reservoir  of  learning,  no  mysterious  lake  of  knowledge 
(as  Sir  William  Temple  expresses  it),  into  which  he  could 
throw  a  bucket.  Some  one  has  defined  originality  as  only 
recasting;  and  we  may  be  sure  that  when  a  modern  statue 
is  made  there  is  a  great  melting  down  of  old  bronze. 
Goethe  somewhere  says  that  all  that  is  wise  has  been 
thought  already,  but  we  must  try,  nevertheless,  to  think  it 
again.  The  same  writer  suggests  that  the  fairest  sign  of 
originality  is  to  know  how  to  develop  an  old  thought  so 
fruitfully  that  no  one  could  have  guessed  before  how  much 
truth  there  was  in  it.  In  other  words,  we  are  original 
when  we  take  thoughts  in  the  bud,  and  make  them  fruitful. 
Thus  no  mighty  intellect  is  wholly  lost,  but,  in  the  lapse  of 

years, 

"  cloth  suffer  a  sea-change 
Into  something  rich  and  strange." 

Every  work  of  genius,  by  coming  into  mesmeric  rapport 
with  the  affinities  of  kindred  genius,  and  firing  its  latent 
energies,  becomes  the  parent  of  many  others;  and  old  ma 
terials  continually  decomposed  and  continually  recombined, 
furnish  a  perpetual  succession  of  imaginative  literature. 

It  is  thus  that  all  the  great  discoveries  in  science  and 
the  most  useful  inventions  have  been  made.  The  mechan 
ical  force  of  steam  was  known  to  Heron  two  thousand  years 
before  Watt  watched  the  jumping  lid  of  the  tea-kettle; 
and,  after  lying  dead  for  nearly  eighteen  centuries,  the 

fruitful  seed-thought  of  the  old  Greek  sprang  up  in  the  in- 
11* 


258  ORIGINALITY. 

vention  of  Blasco  de  Garay,  who  in  1543  propelled  a  ship 
of  two  hundred  tons  in  the  harbor  of  Barcelona,  by  means 
of  paddles  moved  by  a  boiler,  and  again,  at  a  later  day,  in 
the  steamboat  of  Papin,  which  descended  the  river  Fulda 
as  far  as  Miinden.  The  brick-stamps  of  the  Egyptians  sug 
gested  our  movable  types;  the  mnemonics  of  Simonides 
were  the  precursors  of  Grey's  "  Memoria  Technica";  and 
Galileo's  telescope  sprang  from  the  hint  of  an  obscure 
Greek  of  the  Lower  Empire.  The  electric  telegraph  was 
foreshadowed  in  Bailie's  dictionary  a  century  and  a  half 
ago,  if  not  before  in  the  "Mathematical  Recreations"  pub 
lished  in  Paris  in  1626.  Newton  developed  the  imperfect 
hints  of  Hook  into  the  doctrine  of  gravitation;  Dalton  con 
verted  the  vague  and  shadowy  suggestions  of  Higgins  into 
the  chemical  theory  of  Definite  Proportions;  and  Malthus 
took  an  obvious  and  familiar  truth,  which  till  his  time  had 
been  barren  of  results,  and  showed  that  it  teemed  with 
startling  consequences.  So  in  philosophy:  hardly  any  of 
the  great  intellects  that  have  dedicated  their  genius  to  it 
can  lay  claim  to  originality  of  thought.  The  "  Edinburgh 
Review"  justly  says  that  the  great  truths  of  metaphysics 
are  like  family  jewels,  which  descend  as  heir-looms  from 
generation  to  generation,  and  are  perpetually  reset  to  suit 
the  fashion  of  the  times.  "  Thought,"  says  Emerson,  "  is 
the  property  of  him  who  can  entertain  it,  and  of  him 
who  can  adequately  place  it."  Again  he  says:  "  The  nobler 
the  truth  or  sentiment,  the  less  important  the  question  of 
authorship.  It  never  troubles  the  simple  seeker  from 
whom  he  derived  such  or  such  a  sentiment.  Whoever 
expresses  to  us  a  just  thought  makes  ridiculous  the  pains 
of  the  critic  who  should  tell  him  where  such  a  word  has 
been  said  before,  'It  is  no  more  according  to  Plato  than 


ORIGINALITY.  259 

according  to  me.'  "  So  Karl  Ottfried  Miller  says  of  Poesy, 
that,  "  drawing  within  its  circle  all  that  is  glorious  and  in 
spiring,  it  gave  itself  but  little  concern  as  to  where  its 
flowers  originally  grew  ";  and  again,  Shelley  in  the  same 
spirit  declares  that  poetry  creates,  but  it  creates  by  com 
bination  and  representation.  "  One  great  poet  is  a  master 
piece  of  nature,  which  another  not  only  ought  to  study,  but 
must  study.  *  *  *  A  poet  is  the  combined  product  of  such 
internal  powers  as  modify  the  nature  of  others,  and  of 
such  external  influences  as  excite  and  sustain  these  powers; 
he  is  not  one,  but  both.  Every  man's  mind  is,  in  this 
respect,  modified  by  all  the  objects  of  nature  and  art;  by 
every  word  and  every  suggestion  which  he  ever  admitted  to 
act  upon  his  consciousness;  it  is  the  mirror  upon  which  all 
forms  are  reflected,  and  in  which  they  compose  one  form. 
Poets,  not  otherwise  than  philosophers,  painters,  sculptors, 
and  musicians,  are,  in  one  sense,  the  creators,  and  in  an 
other  the  creations,  of  their  age.  From  this  subjection  the 
loftiest  do  not  escape."  In  the  same  spirit  an  English 
writer  used  to  say:  "I  don't  like  my  jokes  until  Sheridan 
has  used  them;  then  I  can  appreciate  them." 

Voltaire  laughed  to  scorn  the  idea  of  a  perfect  origi 
nality.  He  declares  that  the  most  original  writers  borrow 
from  one  another,  and  says  that  the  instruction  we  gather 
from  books  is  like  fire, —  we  fetch  it  from  our  neighbors, 
kindle  it  at  home,  and  communicate  it  to  others,  till  it 
becomes  the  property  of  all.  So  masterly  were  Voltaire's 
imitations,  that  Dubucq  said:  "He  is  like  the  false  Am 
phitryon;  although  the  stranger,  it  is  always  he  who  has 
the  air  of  being  master  of  the  house."  Campbell,  the 
poet,  when  asked  to  write  something  original  in  a  lady's 
album,  said  that  he  had  nothing  original  in  him  except 


260  ORIGINALITY. 

original  sin, — which  was  also  said  by  John  Adams.  Heine 
ridiculed  the  reproach  of  plagiarism.  He  boldly  declared 
that  there  is  no  sixth  commandment  in  art.  The  poet,  he 
said,  is  entitled  to  lay  his  hands  upon  whatever  material 
he  finds  necessary  for  his  work;  he  may  even  appropriate 
whole  pillars  with  their  sculptured  capitals,  if  only  the 
temple  is  magnificent  for  which  he  employs  them  as  sup 
ports.  Nothing,  he  added,  could  be  more  absurd  than  to 
declare  that  a  poet  must  find  all  his  materials  within  him 
self,  and  that  this  only  is  originality.  "  I  am  reminded 
of  a  fable  in  which  the  spider,  conversing  with  the  bee, 
makes  it  a  reproach  against  the  latter  that  she  has  to  col 
lect  materials  from  a  thousand  flowers  for  the  construc 
tion  of  her  honeycomb,  and  the  preparation  of  her  honey; 
'  whereas  I,'  says  the  spider,  '  draw  the  original  threads 
of  my  whole  web  out  of  my  own  body.' "  Goethe  held  a 
similar  opinion.  "Originality!"  he  exclaims,  "what  do 
they  mean  by  it?  The  action  of  the  world  upon  us  be 
gins  with  the  hour  of  our  birth,  and  ends  only  with  our 
death.  It  is  here,  there,  and  everywhere.  There  is  noth 
ing  we  can  claim  as  our  own,  but  energy,  strength,  and 
volition.  Very  little  of  me  would  be  left  if  I  could  but 
say  what  I  owe  to  my  great  predecessors  and  contempora 
ries."  "If  I  could  but  say"!  Ay,  there's  the  rub.  Who 
can  say  just  what  ones,  of  the  myriad  thoughts  that  flit 
through  his  brain,  are  his  own,  and  what  are  not?  Who 
can  trace  the  origin  of  the  multitude  of  ideas  that  since 
his  infancy  have  fallen  upon  his  mind  like  dust,  impalpa 
ble  and  ever  accumulating?  Every  day  we  imbibe  thought 
unconsciously,  as  we  inhale  the  atmosphere,  or  as  the  earth 
drinks  in  the  dews.  Morning,  noon  and  night  we  are 
ruminating  upon  the  ideas  of  others,  derived  from  books, 


ORIGINALITY.  261 

magazines,  newspapers,  conversation,  lectures,  speeches,  and 
sermons,  and  unconsciously  assimilating  these  foreign  ideas, 
and  fitting  them  to  our  individual  uses,  till  they  circulate 
like  our  life-blood  through  every  vein  and  artery  of  our 
intellectual  being,  and  become  an  indistinguishable  part 
of  ourselves.  Who  can  say,  as  he  draws  from  his  well- 
stocked  quiver  a  fine  arrow,  whether  or  not  it  has  been 
shafted  with  the  solid  sense  of  Bacon,  feathered  with  the 
fancy  of  Byron,  or  pointed  with  the  logic  of  Chillingworth? 
We  repeat,  therefore,  that  the  most  conscientious  writer 
finds  it  impossible  to  give  credit  for  all  his  borrowed  ideas. 
He  brings  forth  from  his  storehouse  things  new  and  old, 
but  is  puzzled  oftentimes  to  distinguish  the  one  from  the 
other.  He  finds  that,  as  Derwent  Coleridge  finely  says,  in 
defending  his  father,  the  immortal  "  S.  T.  C.,'1  from  the 
charge  of  literary  theft,  "  in  an  overwrought  brain  the 
door  which  separates  the  chambers  of  memory  and  im 
agination  is  so  lightly  hung,  that  it  will  now  and  then 
swing  open,  and  allow  the  treasures  of  one  to  roll  into 
the  other."  There  is  no  man  living  who,  if  he  were  rig 
idly  limited  in  writing  or  speaking  to  ideas  which  are  the 
pure  product  of  his  own  brain,  would  not  become  as  dry 
and  barren  as  Sahara.  He  would  be  more  laconic  than 
the  Spartans,  if  not  as  dumb  as  the  ^Egyptian  sphinx. 

It  is  only  by  traveling  out  of  ourselves  and  living  in 
others, —  by  appropriating,  re-creating,  and  remodeling  the 
results  of  reading  and  reflection, —  that  we  can  avoid  in 
tellectual  feebleness,  conceit,  and  narrowness.  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds  told  his  pupils  that  when  they  had  continually 
before  them  the  great  works  of  art,  to  impregnate  their 
minds  with  kindred  ideas,  they  were  then,  and  not  till 
then,  fit  to  produce  something  of  the  same  species.  The 


262  ORIGINALITY. 

greatest  natural  genius,  he  declared,  could  not  subsist  on 
its  own  stock;  and  he  added  that  he  who  should  resolve 
never  to  ransack  any  mind  but  his  own  would  soon  be 
reduced  from  mere  barrenness  to  the  poorest  of  all  imita 
tions  ;  "he  will  be  obliged  to  imitate  himself,  and  to 
repeat  what  he  has  before  repeated."  "  Behold,"  says 
Castera,  the  French  translator  of  Camoens,  "  what  makes 
great  writers!  Those  who  pretend  to  give  us  nothing  but 
fruit  of  their  own  growth  soon  fail,  like  rivulets  which 
dry  up  in  summer.  Far  different  are  those  which  receive 
in  their  course  the  tribute  of  a  hundred  rivers,  and  which, 
even  in  the  dog-days,  carry  mighty  waves  triumphantly  to 
the  ocean." 

We  see  thus  that  the  very  training  which  every  writer 
undergoes, — to  which  he  is  universally  advised  to  subject 
himself, —  is  inevitably  destructive  of  personal  originality. 
Why  is  he  told  to  give  his  days  and  nights  to  the  great 
masters  of  literature,  unless  that  he  may  saturate  his  mind 
with  their  ideas  and  spirit,  and  form  to  theirs  the  relish 
of  his  soul?  And  is  it  strange  that  after  years  spent  in 
imbuing  his  mind  with  their  excellences,  and  in  catching 
their  felicities  of  thought  and  expression,  these  thoughts, 
images  and  phrases  should  give  the  prevailing  hue  to  his 
own  productions, — that  these  borrowed  ideas  should  become 
so  inextricably  mingled  with  his  own  feelings  and  mental 
operations  as  to  make  almost  a  part  of  himself,  and  to  be 
with  difficulty  distinguished  from  his  own  sentiments?  Was 
Sir  William  Temple  a  plagiarist  because  he  illustrated  the 
advantage  of  modern  over  ancient  learning,  by  comparing 
the  former  to  a  dwarf  mounted  on  the  shoulders  of  a  giant, 
—  an  illustration  which  is  quoted  in  Burton's  "  Anatomy 
of  Melancholy,"  ridiculed  in  Hudibras,  and  which  may  be 


ORIGINALITY.  263 

traced  as  far  back  at  least  as  to  a  medical  poet  of  the 
twelfth  century?  Shall  we  call  Thomas  Fuller  a  thief 
because  he  says  almost  in  the  very  words  of  Horace  that 
"  that  fork  must  have  strong  tines  with  which  you  would 
thrust  out  nature"?  Did  Brougham  plagiarize  from  the 
same  author  when  he  said:  "  He  who  is  not  bold  enough  to 
face  the  perils  of  the  deep  may  hug  the  shore  too  near,  and 
make  shipwreck  upon  its  inequalities "  ?  Was  Calhoun 
guilty  of  petty  larceny  when  he  spoke  of  a  "  masterly  in 
activity";  or  did  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  who  had  long 
before  used  this  "  fine  original  expression "  for  which  Cal 
houn  had  been  complimented,  dream  of  theft  when  it  was 
suggested  to'  him,  as  it  probably  was,  by  the  strenua  inertia 
of  Horace?  Was  Abraham  Lincoln  a  plunderer  because, 
when  he  said  "  he  had  no  vices,"  he  used  the  very  words  of 
the  same  author  in  the  third  Satire  of  the  First  Book, — 

"Nullane  habes  vitia"? 

When  Fillmore,  upon  being  told  that  Scott  had  been  nomi 
nated  for  the  Presidency,  said  to  a  friend  that  he  must  now 
attach  himself  to  Scott,  since  "  more  persons  worshipped 
the  rising  than  the  setting  sun,"  was  the  advice  less  his 
own,  or  less  happy,  because  Pompey  had  said  the  same 
thing  to  Sylla?  Was  Choate  a  plagiarist  when,  imitating 
Grattan,  he  said  of  Massachusetts:  "She  will  be  true  to 
the  Constitution.  She  sat  among  the  most  affectionate  at 
its  cradle;  she  will  follow,  the  saddest  of  the  procession  of 
sorrow,  its  hearse  "? 

When  Emerson  would  define  a  great  man,  he  can  find 
no  better  definition  than  one  of  great  affinities,  who  takes 
up  into  himself  all  knowables  as  his  food.  In  all  ages  of 
the  world  the  greatest  geniuses  have  been  the  greatest  bor- 


264  ORIGINALITY. 

rowers.  Greedy  devourers  of  books,  plucking  out  "the 
heart  of  their  mystery "  with  astonishing  quickness  and 
facility,  and  blessed  with  memories  like  hooks  of  steel,  they 
have  not  scrupled  to  seize  and  utilize  ever}7  good  thought 
they  could  pick  up  in  their  reading.  Moliere,  when  charged 
with  plagiarism,  declared  that  "he  recovered  his  property 
wherever  he  found  it."  A  competent  critic  declares  that 
he  is  only  Plautus  in  a  French  court-mask.  Beaumar- 
chais  laughingly  proclaimed  that  wherever  he  found  a  good 
thing  he  would  appropriate  it,  if  he  needed  it.  Chaucer, 
Lowell  reminds  us,  "  invented  almost  nothing.  Wherever 
he  found  anything  directed  to  Geoffrey  Chaucer  he  took  it, 
and  made  the  most  of  it."  There  has  been  much  discus 
sion  about  the  originality  of  Montesquieu.  "  I  believe 
him,"  says  Professor  Flint  in  his  "  Philosophy  of  History," 
'f  to  have  been  endowed  with  that  most  valuable  sort  of 
originality  ivhich  enables  a  man  to  draw  with  independence 
from  the  most  varied  sources,  and  to  use  what  he  obtains 
according  to  a  plan  and  principles,  and  for  a  purpose  of  his 
own, —  the  originality  of  Aristotle  and  Adam  Smith" 
Mirabeau  was  a  sublime  borrower.  When  he  delivered 
his  electric  speeches  he  used  to  receive  notes  from  his  aids 
and  pupils,  which  he  passed,  without  pausing,  into  the 
texture  of  his  discourse.  He  emplo}7ed  others  to  furnish 
him  with  the  materials  of  his  speeches,  just  as  the  statuary 
employs  others  to  extract  the  marble  from  the  quarry,  and 
chip  off  the  rough  edges,  and  then,  with  the  master-touches 
of  his  chisel,  gives  it  respiration  and  life.  So  with  the 
great  painters  and  composers.  Raphael  did  not  disdain  to 
transplant  whole  figures  from  Masacchio  and  Fra  Bar- 
tolommeo.  Mozart  boldly  pillaged  from  Gliick  and  Handel; 


ORIGINALITY.  265 

and  Meyerbeer  has  been  accused  of  stealing  all  his  airs, 
and  disguising  them  to  hide  their  origin. 

The  drunken  old  dramatist,  Greene,  tried  to  convince  his 
contemporaries  that  the  author  of  Lear,  because  he  bor 
rowed  his  plots,  was  "  an  upstart  crow,  bedecked  with  pea 
cock's  feathers";  but  the  sturdy  sense  of  England  scouted 
the  aspersion.  There  were  other  Lears  before  Shakspeare's, 
and  some  passages  from  an  old  play  might  have  been  adopted 
by  the  great  dramatist;  but  as  the  author  of  u  Nugae  Crit 
ics  "  says,  we  feel,  as  we  compare  the  two  productions, 
that  in  one  play  we  have  the  work  of  a  journeyman,  and 
that  in  the  other  a  master-mind  has  been  at  work  in  the 
chambers  of  the  old  man's  brain,  and  given  us  out  of  the 
same  materials  a  picture  which  will  last  while  human 
hearts  throb  and  thrill.  Indeed,  Shakspeare's  genius  is 
never  more  imperial  than  when  he  borrows  most,  — "  he 
breathed  upon  dead  bodies,  and  brought  them  into  life." 

Those  who  are  familiar  with  Alexander  Smith's  poems 
will  remember  his  beautiful  comparison  of  the  sea  to  a 

bridegroom : 

"The  bridegroom  sea 

Is  toying  with  the  shore,  his  wedded  bride, 
And,  in  the  fullness  of  his  marriage  joy, 
He  decorates  her  tawny  brow  with  shells, — 
Retires  a  space  to  see  how  fair  she  looks, 
Then,  proud,  runs  up  to  kiss  her." 

The  critics  pronounced  this  image  a  plagiarism  from 
Cyril  Torneur;  but  it  was  shown,  in  reply,  that  the  phe 
nomenon  here  used  for  a  poetic  purpose  had  been  employed 
in  one  way  or  other  by  generations  of  poets  before  Cyril 
Torneur  was  heard  of,—  that  the  love-sick  sea  had,  in  fact, 
been  engaged  in  kissing  and  hugging  the  shore  from  the 
12 


266  ORIGINALITY. 

time  of  the  patriarchs.  Sir  Arthur  Helps,  in  a  letter  to 
the  accused  poet,  said  that  the  trouble  with  his  critics  was, 
.that  they  could  not  distinguish  between  the  man  who  con 
quers  and  the  man  who  steals.  In  this  remark  we  have 
the  marrow  of  the  whole  matter.  We  do  not  cry  "  Stop 
thief !  "  when  Napoleon  annexes  half  of  Europe  to  his 
empire,  nor  do  we  cry  "Plagiarist!"  when  Shakspeare 
borrows  a  plot,  or  incorporates  another's  sentiments  with 
his  own.  Grant  that  the  finest  passages  of  many  poets 
are  but  embellished  recollections  of  other  men's  produc 
tions;  that  Gray's  "snatch  a  fearful  joy"  is  the  "  gaudia 
pallent "  of  Statius  ;  that  "  the  purple  light  of  love "  is 
the  "lumen  juventae  purpureum"  of  Virgil;  that  "grim- 
visaged,  comfortless  despair,"  is  the  "grim  and  comfortless 
despair"  of  Shakspeare;  that  "pangs  unfelt  before"  are 
the  "pangs  unfelt  before"  of  Milton;  that  "mock  the  air 
with  idle  state "  is  Shakspeare's  "  mocking  the  air  with 
colors  idly  spread";  that  "full  many  a  gem,"  etc.,  is  a 
gem  from  Bishop  Hall;  grant  that  Ben  Jonson  cribbed  the 
materials  of  his  mosaics  from  Philostratus  and  Catullus; 
that  Pope's  fine  description  of  the  literary  student  who, 
as  he  climbs  the  Alpine  heights  of  literature,  sees 

"Hills  peep  o'er  hills,  and  Alps  on  Alps  arise," 

a  simile  which  Johnson  thought  the  finest  and  aptest  in 
the  language,  was  copied  from  Drummond ;  that  Dean 
Swift  poached  on  the  preserves  of  Cyreno  Bergerac;  that 
Robert  Hall  "  conveyed "  some  gems  of  illustration  from 
Burke  and  Grattan,  and  that  Macaulay  reconveyed  them 
from  Hall;  that  Shelley's  "Death  and  his  brother  Sleep" 
was  borrowed  from  Sir  Thomas  Browne;  that  Cowper 
took  his  "  cup  that  cheers,  but  not  inebriates,"  from  Berke- 


ORIGINALITY.  267 

ley's  "  Sirius,"  and  his  "  God  made  the  country,  man  made 
the  town,"  from  the  Latin  poet  Varro ;  that  Webster's 
"  sea  of  upturned  faces "  overflowed  into  his  page  from 
that  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  that  a  dozen  of  his  best 
passages  are  imitations  of  Burke  and  Erskine: — does  all 
this  detract  a  jot  or  tittle  from  these  great  men's  fame? 
Can  you  build  a  house  without  lumber,  bricks,  or  stone? 
Can  the  most  skillful  architect  do  without  the  quarryman, 
bricklayer,  or  plasterer?  Can  Napoleon  dispense  with  the 
recruiting-sergeant,  or  Paganini  with  the  maker  of  Cre- 
rnonas?  Yet,  as  another  has  well  said,  "we  do  not  rank 
together  the  great  violinist  and  the  artificer  who  con 
structed  his  instrument.  We  do  not  place  Sir  Christopher 
Wrenn  and  a  hodman  on  the  same  level."  Stone-masons 
collected  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's,  but  it  was  a  man  of  genius 
who  "  hung  it  in  air."  The  great  thinkers  of  every  age 
do  not  differ  from  the  little  ones  so  much  in  their  thoughts 
as  in  the  manner  in  which  they  wreak  their  thoughts  upon 
expression.  It  is  not  "the  conception  of  certain  extraor 
dinary  and  brilliant  ideas  that  gives  them  their  preemi 
nence,  but  the  judgment  that  discriminates  and  adequately 
values  the  ideas,  the  patience  which  arrests  them  in  their 
night,  and  the  skill  and  strength  which  mould  and  con 
dense  them  into  consistence  and  form.  The  great  poet  is 
not  one  who  invents  wholly  novel  figures,  but  one  who 
lays  a  firm  hand  upon  shapes  that  have  floated  dimly  be 
fore  a  thousand  eyes,  and  fixes  them  forever  upon  the  can 
vas.  He  gives  to  other  men's  inchoate  thoughts  artistic 
development  and  expression. 

The  Roman  writers  borrowed  with  such  freedom  from 
their  predecessors  that  their  literature  has  been  called  one 
immense  plagiarism.  Horace  boasts  of  his  originality, — 


268  ORIGINALITY. 

"Libera  per  vacuum  posui  vestigia  princeps: 
Non  aliena  meo  pressi  pede  " ; 

yet  we  know  that  he  poaches  on  the  pages  of  Alceeus  and 
Pindar;  and  Virgil  "conveys"  images,  epithets,  and  even 
whole  passages,  from  Homer,  Hesiod,  Theocritus,  and  En- 
nius.  He  regards  these  writers  as  mere  quarries  for  ideas, 
just  as  the  builders  of  English  country  mansions  used  the 
ruins  of  old  castles.  The  most  original  of  Latin  poets  are 
usually  thought  to  be  Lucretius  and  Catullus,  yet  a  high 
authority  declares  them  to  be  only  the  echo  of  something 
still  more  ancient.  So  with  the  modern  writers,  there  is 
not  one  of  them  but  is  indebted  to  his  ancestors ;  as  Dryden 
happily  says,  "  we  shall  track  him  everywhere  in  the  snow 
of  the  ancients."  Spenser  borrowed  largely  from  Tasso; 
and  Milton,  "  the  celestial  thief,1'  is  accused  by  Dr.  John 
son  of  being  a  wholesale  plagiarist.  This  is  too  sweeping 
a  charge,  but  it  is  certain  that  Milton  began  by  reproducing 
the  classics,  and  was  a  copyist  before  he  became  an  in 
ventor  of  thoughts  and  harmonies.  When  he  began  "  Para 
dise  Lost,1'  he  had  the  reading  of  a  life-time  behind  him, 
and  he  drew  upon  his  accumulated  store  without  conscious 
distinction  of  its  sources.  As  Mark  Pattison,  his  latest 
biographer,  says,  "  his  verse  flowed  from  his  own  soul,  but 
it  was  a  soul  which  had  grown  up  nourished  with  the  spoil 
of  all  the  ages.  *  *  *  His  dic-tion  is  the  elaborated  out 
come  of  all  the  best  words  of  all  antecedent  poetry." 
Maifei  and  other  Italian  writers  assert  that  the  ground 
work  of  his  great  epic  was  taken"  from  the  "  Angelei'da " 
of  Valvazone.  The  influence  of  Tasso  upon  Milton  is 
universally  conceded.  Hallam  reminds  us  that  being  blind 
when  he  began  "Paradise  Lost,"  Milton  "had  only  his 
recollection  to  rely  upon.  Then  the  remembrance  of  early 


ORIGINALITY.  269 

reading  came  over  his  dark  and  lonely  path  like  the  moon 
emerging  from  the  clouds.  Then  it  was  that  the  Muse 
was  truly  his;  not  only  as  she  poured  her  native  inspira 
tion  into  his  mind,  but  as  the  daughter  of  memory,  com 
ing  with  fragments  of  ancient  melodies,  the  voice  of  Homer, 
Euripides,  and  Tasso."  Alexander  Pope  was  the  most  con 
summate  adopter  and  adapter  of  ideas  that  English  liter 
ature  can  boast.  It  was  in  the  prose  writers  of  the  sev 
enteenth  century,  little  read  in  his  day  even  by  scholars, 
that  he  found  many  of  those  witty  sayings  and  axioms  of 
moral  wisdom  which,  polished  with  taste  and  sharpened 
with  skill,  present  such  rows  of  glittering  points  in  his 
verse.  Every  elegant  turn  he  met  with,  he  introduced 
from  native  or  naturalized  from  foreign  authors  ;  but  it 
was  usually  only  the  raw  material  that  he  appropriated, 
and  he  set  every  borrowed  jewel  in  gold.  "  To  be  selected 
out  of  a  second-rate  author,  and  put  into  one  of  Pope's 
lines,  was  the  apotheosis  of  an  expression."  It  is  now  well 
known  that  Coleridge  never  saw  Mont  Blanc,  but  borrowed 
the  inspiration  of  his  magnificent  hymn  from  Frederica 
Brun.  Byron,  who  pronounced  all  pretensions  to  origi 
nality  ridiculous,  borrowed  not  only  the  plans,  but  even, 
to  a  large  extent,  the  very  language  of  his  poems.  The 
description  of  the  shipwreck  in  Don  Juan  is  almost  a 
literal  transcript  of  a  narrative  published  many  years  be 
fore;  and  the  beautiful  lines  on  the  death  of  Kirke  White, 
—  in  which  this  poet  is  compared  to  a  struck  eagle 
stretched  upon  the  plain,  viewing  its  own  feather  on  the 
arrow,  the  plumage  that  had  warmed  its  nest,  drinking 
the  last  life-drop  of  its  blood, — are  copied,  almost  verbatim, 
from  an  old  English  poet,  who,  in  turn,  it  is  said,  had  bor 
rowed  the  figure  from  a  Greek  poet  that  lived  two  thou- 


270  ORIGINALITY 

sand  years  ago.  Byron's  mind  has  been  compared  to  an 
JSolian  harp;  the  gentlest  breeze,  the  slightest  hint,  was 
sufficient  to  evoke  its  music;  but,  without  this  breeze,  with 
out  this  hint,  it  was  silent.  His  latest  biographer  admits 
that  he  hardly  brought  a  new  idea  into  the  world,  but 
asserts  that  he  quadrupled  the  force  of  existing  ideas,  and 
scattered  them  far  and  wide. 

Literature  abounds  in  stock-sayings  and  illustrations, 
which  are  common  property.  Macaulay's  New  Zealander, 
and  Talleyrand's  observation  about  language,  have  long 
pedigrees.  Bacon's  saying  that  the  earliest  generations  of 
men  should  be  called  the  youngsters  rather  than  the  an 
cients,  is  as  old  as  Giordano  Bruno.  Matthew  Arnold  took 
his  "sweetness  and  light"  from  Swift's  "Battle  of  the 
Books."  Paley's  watch  ticked  in  Holland  before  it  did  in 
England;  Columbus's  egg  learned  its  trick  of  balancing 
long  before  the  fifteenth  century;  and  Poe's  "ghastly,  grim, 
and  ancient  raven"  croaked  to  Albert  Pike  before  it  sat 
above  Poe's  chamber  door. 

All  the  arguments  against  Christianity  to-day,  which 
are  paraded  with  such  a  flourish  of  trumpets,  are  rehashes 
of  old  ones.  The  Darwinian  theory  is  but  a  republication, 
with  fresh  illustrations,  of  Monboddo  and  Lamarck*  Tyn- 
dall  defends  himself  by  showing  that  he  has  only  repeated 
the  speculations  of  Epictetus,  Helvetius,  and  Descartes. 
Kenan's  " femme  hallucinee"  the  hypothesis  with  which  he 
accounts  for  the  testimony  of  the  women  who  saw  Christ 
after  his  resurrection,  is  as  old  as  Celsus.  Again,  according 
to  the  author  of  the  late  learned  work  on  the  "Conflict 
of  Christianity  with  Heathenism,"  the  argument  of  this 
most  ancient  antagonist  of  Christianity  strikingly  coincides 
with  that  of  Strauss,  its  modern  foe.  Like  Celsus,  the  Ger- 


ORIGINALITY.  271 

man  skeptic  denies  any  design  in  the  world,  any  improve 
ment  or  deterioration,  any  distinction  between  man  and 
animal.*  Ingersoll  has  shot  no  new  arrows  at  Christianity, 
but  only  newly  feathered  and  pointed  the  darts  of  Toland 
and  Tom  Paine. 

So  with  many  of  the  defenses  of  Christianity.  The 
germinal  thoughts  of  Butler's  Analogy  may  be  dimly  traced 
in  Lactantius,  in  Clarke,  and  in  Bishop  Berkeley;  but 
they  are  none  the  less  Butler's  because  they  were  vaguely 
hinted  at  by  others.  Ideas  belong  not  to  him  who  has  first 
thought  them,  but  to  him  who  has  used  them  with  the  most 
effect,  as  in  the  industrial  arts  inventions  belong  to  those 
who  know  how  to  apply  them.  They  are  the  property,  not 
of  him  who  has  seen  them  drifting  by  like  fragments  of  a 
wreck,  but  of  him  who  puts  out  in  his  boat  and  drags 
them  to  the  land.  As  Paley  says:  "  He  only  discovers  who 
proves."  It  may  be  hard  that  the  man  who  first  dimly 
conceived  an  01  iginal  idea  should  be  deprived  of  the  honors 
it  confers;  but  if  it  has  fallen  into  better  hands  than  his, 
and  has  been  more  clearly,  more  vividly,  or  more  completely 
presented  than  before,  the  world  is  the  gainer,  whatever 
the  individual  loss.  Coleridge  took  the  germinal  idea  of 
"  The  Ancient  Mariner "  from  a  passage  of  Shelrocke  in 
"  Purchases  Pilgrims,"  which  relates  the  circumstance  of 
foul  weather  having  followed  the  killing  of  an  albatross; 
but  who  else,  out  of  so  paltry  an  incident,  could  have 
woven  in  the  loom  of  his  imagination  the  warp  and  woof 
of  that  most  weird  and  unearthly  of  poems, —  a  poem  so 
saturated  with  magic  and  snaky  fascination,  that,  com 
pared  with  it,  the  demonologies  of  Godwin,  Maturin,  Lewis 
and  Shelley  seem  tame  and  cold.  Goldsmith  borrowed  the 
*  "The  Conflict  of  Christianity  with  Heathenism,"  American  Translation,  p.  104. 


272  ORIGINALITY. 

beautiful  simile  which  ends  the  description  of  the  country 
clergyman  in  "  The  Deserted  Village,"  from  a  poem  by  the 
Abbe  de  Chaulieu, —  a  poet  whose  verses  were  on  every 
tongue  when  Goldsmith  traveled  in  France.  The  Abba's 
lines  are  as  follows: 

"Tel  qu'un  rocher  dont  la  tete, 

Egalant  le  Mont  Athos, 
Voit  a  ses  pieds  la  tempete 

Troubler  le  calm  des  flots; 
La  mer  autour  bruit  et  gronde; 

Malgre*  ses  emotions, 
Sur  son  front  e'leve'  regne  une  paix  profonde," — 

which  Goldsmith  thus  reproduces: 

"  As  some  tall  cliff  that  lifts  its  awful  form, 
Swells  from  the  vale,  and  midway  leaves  the  storm, 
Though  round  its  base  the  rolling  clouds  be  spread, 
Eternal  sunshine  settles  on  its  head." 

Here  every  reader  of  taste  can  see  that  Goldsmith  has 
not  only  surpassed  the  original,  but  by  his  happy  applica 
tion  of  the  image  to  the  Christian  preacher,  has  given  it  a 
moral  sublimity  to  which  it  has  no  pretension  in  Chaulieu, 
who,  Frenchman-like,  applies  it  to  his  own  philosophical 
patience  under  his  physical  maladies.  So  with  scientific 
discoveries  and  inventions.  It  is  none  the  less  honor  to  him 
who  discovered  the  art  of  printing  that  some  germ  of  the 
principle  had  been  known  and  in  use  ages  before;  nor  is 
the  discovery  of  gunpowder  as  a  means  of  warfare  less 
creditable  because  some  inflammable  composition  had  been 
used  by  the  Romans  and  the  Chinese  for  many  centuries  in 
making  fireworks.  Was  Leverrier's  location  of  the  undis 
covered  planet  less  meritorious  because,  as  he  searched  the 
pathless  infinitude  with  his  telescope,  he  availed  himself  of 


ORIGINALITY.  273 

the  labors  and  recorded  demonstrations  of  Newton?  Was 
Newton's  discovery  of  the  law  of  gravitation  less  creditable 
because  he  availed  himself  of  other  men's  mathematics? 
Grant  that  Morse  had  saturated  his  mind  with  the  ideas  of 
Priestly  and  Franklin,  Volta  and  Galvani,  and  caught  his 
hint  of  the  electric  telegraph  from  Professor  Jackson  as  the 
two  were  breasting  the  Atlantic  waves  in  the  Sully  in 
1832,  does  this  prove  that  Morse's  name  should  not  be 
yoked  with  the  lightning  in  our  thoughts?  As  well  might 
the  apple  say  to  Newton:  "If  I  had  not  dropped  to  the 
ground  on  that  sunny  afternoon  when  you  walked  in  the 
garden,  the  glory  of  discovering  the  principle  of  gravita 
tion  would  never  have  been  yours."  Gliick,  the  father  of 
dramatic  music,  confessed  that  the  conception  of  the 
"  ground  tone  "  of  one  of  his  finest  operas  was  the  voice 
of  the  people,  of  which  he  had  learned  at  Vienna,  crying 
to  their  Emperor  for  "Bread!  Bread!"  But  was  there 
less  genius  shown  in  thus  seizing  and  reducing  to  harmony 
the  outpourings  of  a  nation's  heart,  because  the  idea  was 
suggested  from  without?  Thorwaldsen's  Mercury  was  sug 
gested  by  a  lad  whom  he  saw  sitting  at  rest;  and  the  action 
of  Kean's  Richard  III,  in  his  last  struggle  with  his  tri 
umphant  antagonist,  when  he  stands,  after  his  sword  has 
been  wrested  from  him,  with  his  hands  stretched  out  "as 
if  his  will  could  not  be  disarmed,  and  the  very  phantoms 
of  his  despair  had  a  withering  power,"  was  borrowed, 
Hazlitt  tell  us,  from  the  last  effort  of  Painter  in  his  fight 
with  Oliver.  But  does  this  or  that  detract  from  the  genius 
of  the  actor  or  the  sculptor?  Millions  of  other  men  might 
have  seen  the  lad  or  the  pugilist,  but  no  Mercury  would 
have  sprang  out  of  the  one  vision,  nor  any  masterpiece  of 
acting  out  of  the  other. 


274  ORIGINALITY. 

So  far  are  the  claims  of  a  man  of  genius  from  being 
invalidated  because  his  inventions  or  discoveries  have  not 
been  absolutely  insulated  from  every  preceding  achieve 
ment,  that  the  very  opposite  is  true.  It  is  only  because  of 
the  state  of  a  science  at  the  time  when  a  man  takes  it  up 
that  he  is  able  to  make  his  own  peculiar  discoveries. 
Hence,  as  Samuel  Bailey  observes,  those  fugitive  glimpses, 
those  scattered  lights,  those  casual  touches,  which  we  find 
in  writings  of  the  same  date.  The  minds  of  a  number  of 
individuals  seem  to  be  contemporaneously  laboring  with 
obscure  intimations  of  the  same  truth  till,  in  the  most 
vigorous  among  them,  it  struggles  from  its  obscurity  and. 
bursts  into  day.  "  The  greatest  inventor  in  science,"  says 
an  eminent  philosopher,  "  was  never  able  to  do  more  than 
to  accelerate  the  progress  of  discovery."  In  fine,  every 
thinker,  whether  inventor  or  writer,  lives  in  the  great 
ocean  of  human  thought,  and  could  not,  if  he  would,  divest 
himself  of  its  influence.  Hence  it  is  that  the  same  dis 
coveries  and  inventions  are  often  hit  upon  simultaneously 
in  different  countries,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of  the  planet 
Neptune,  which  was  discovered  nearly  at  the  same  time  by 
Leverrier  in  France  and  Adams  in  England,  and  the  dis 
covery  respecting  the  nervous  system  made  simultaneously 
by  Sir  Charles  Bell  in  England  and  Signer  Bellinger!  in 
Italy.  Professor  Marsh,  in  his  "Lectures  on  the  English 
Language,"  observes  that  society  now  is  so  intensely  social, 
and  men  through  the  action  of  the  printing-press  par 
ticipate  so  largely  in  one  another's  intellectual  condition, 
that  instances  of  concurrent  mental  action  between  un 
connected  individuals  are  perpetually  recurring.  "Not 
only  does  almost  every  new  mechanical  contrivance,11  says 
he,  "  originate  with  half  a  dozen  different  inventors  at  the 


ORIGINALITY.  275 

same  moment,  but  the  same  thing  is  true  of  literary  crea 
tion.  If  you  conceive  a  striking  thought,  a  beautiful 
image,  an  apposite  illustration,  which  you  know  to  be 
original  with  yourself,  and  delay  for  a  twelvemonth  to 
vindicate  your  priority  of  claim  by  putting  It  on  record, 
you  will  find  a  dozen  scattered  authors  simultaneously 
uttering  the  same  thing." 

Again,  it  must  be  remembered  by  those  who  see  in 
every  literary  parallelism  a  deliberate  plagiarism,  that  all 
truth  is  a  unit,  and  hence  that  every  man  who  has  mental 
force  to  break  through  the  shells  and  husks  of  things,  and 
penetrate  to  their  very  heart  and  core,  must  of  necessity 
bring  back  the  same  report  as  his  predecessors.  Consider 
ing  how  many  thousand  workers  there  have  been  in  the 
fields  of  science  and  literature  since  the  first  poet  sang  and 
the  first  philosopher  wrote,  and  considering  that  nature 
and  truth  are  unvarying  and  eternal,  is  it  any  more  sur 
prising  that  they  suggest  to  different  writers  the  same 
ideas,  and  are  described  in  the  same  language,  than  that 
the  sky,  the  earth,  the  wood  and  the  wave  should  be  pic 
tured  on  the  canvas  of  one  painter  in  the  same  hues  with 
which  they  are  clothed  by  another?  Must  I  call  the  grass 
gray  to  avoid  the  charge  of  plagiarism,  because  somebody 
else  has  called  it  green?  Those  who  object  to  a  writer  that 
he  says  nothing  absolutely  new,  might  as  well  object  to 
Nature,  because  in  her  -lusty  prodigality  she  delights  in 
repeating  herself,  and  reproduces  the  same  flowers  year 
after  year.  Walking  in  a  garden,  and  seeing  a  rose,  they 
might  say:  "I  have  met  with  that  remark  before."  The 
question  is  one  not  of  priority,  'but  of  truth ;  not  of  chro 
nology,  but  of  successful  assimilation  and  expression;  not 
whether  we  have  nicely  discriminated  our  borrowed 


276  ORIGINALITY. 

thoughts  from  our  own,  but  whether  "  we  have  breathed 
our  own  convictions  into  the  thoughts  that  have  got 
mixed  up  in  our  skulls,"  and  given  them  a  fresh  vitality 
by  conveying  them  in  language  that  is  flavored  with  our 
own  idiosyncrasy.  La  Bruyere  said  of  Boileau,  who 
abounds  in  imitations,  that  he  seemed  to  create  the 
thoughts  of  other  people,  so  ingenious  are  the  turns  he 
gives  to  a  simile  or  expression.  Bossuet  borrows  freely 
from  Tertullian,  Chrysostom,  and  Augustine,  but  he  does 
it  so  felicitously  that  his  earliest  editor  regards  him  as 
scarcely  less  original  when  he  quotes  than  when  he  invents. 
Sterne  has  shocked  the  moral  nerves  of  some  critics  by 
the  audacity  with  which,  in  "  Tristam  Shandy,"  he  has 
helped  himself  to  the  ideas,  and  even  the  language,  of 
Burton's  "Anatomy";  but  were  two  books  ever  more  un 
like  than  the  "  Anatomy  of  Melancholy "  and  "  Tristam 
Shandy"?  So  Gray  borrowed  his  jewels  of  phrase  from 
all  sources;  but  he  rendered  them  his  own  by  his  inim 
itable  arrangement  of  them,  and  nothing  is  more  amaz 
ing  than  the  transcendent  originality  with  which,  in 
working  upon  these  foreign  substances,  his  genius  pre 
serves  unique,  unimitating  and  inimitable,  its  own  essen 
tial  idiosyncrasy.  He  wrought  his  poems  in  precisely  the 
way  that  Mozart  composed  his  music.  Nobody  has  ever 
disputed  the  originality  of  the  author  of  "  The  Magic 
Flute";  yet  his  biographer,  Mr.  .Holmes,  tells  us  that  he 
readily  assimilated  into  his  musical  constitution  all  that  he 
found  suitable  in  the  works  of  others  as  pabulum  for  his 
genius.  He  often  reproduced  from  them  whatever  was 
striking  or  beautiful,  not  servilely,  but  mingling  his  own 
nature  and  feeling  with  them,  in  a  manner  at  once  sur 
prising  and  delightful.  His  example  strikingly  shows  that 


ORIGINALITY.  277 

not  only  are  the  originals  not  original,  as  some  define 
originality,  but  that  varied  knowledge,  whether  derived 
from  study  or  observation,  is  a  necessary  condition  of  all 
original  conceptions  properly  so  called.  In  what  do  the 
novelty  and  freshness  of  Bacon's  thoughts  consist?  Is  it 
not  in  the  aptness  with  which  he  illustrates  one  group  of 
ideas  by  another  group  brought  from  a  far  distant  region 
in  the  realm  of  knowledge? 

We  have,  therefore,  little  sympathy  with  those  literary 
detectives  who  are  always  on  the  alert  to  detect  petty 
parallelisms  and  coincidences  of  expression,  and  cry  out 
"  Stop  thief!  "  whenever  they  spy  out  an  instance  of  as 
similation  or  appropriation  of  thought  in  a  work  which  is 
original  in  the  only  sense  in  which  originality  is  possible. 
A  definition  of  plagiarism  which  makes  all  authors  pla 
giarists  is  evidently  absurd.  In  nineteen  cases  out  of 
twenty  that  which  is  denounced  as  such  is  just  such  pla 
giarism  as  the  plants  exercise  upon  the  earth  and  air,  or 
the  bee  upon  the  flowers  and  honeysuckles, —  to  organize 
the  stolen  material  into  higher  forms  and  make  it  suit 
able  for  the  food  of  man.  But  when  a  writer,  instead  of 
assimilating  his  acquisitions,  is  overmastered  by  them,  and 
lets  them  assimilate  him;  when,  instead  of  rifling  the 
flowers  of  literature  of  their  sweets  like  the  bee,  to  make 
a  new  compound  distinct  from  the  substances  of  which  it 
is  composed,  he  transplants  the  flowers  bodily,  stalk  and 
root,  into  his  own  pages;  when,  instead  of  using  the 
thoughts  of  other  minds  as  fertilizing  pollen  to  make  his 
own  more  productive,  and  giving  back  what  he  absorbs  in 
new  conceptions, —  "  new  by  a  juster  application,  or  a  more 
felicitous  expression,  or  a  fresh  development  of  the  origi 
nal  thought," —  he  simply  copies  both  sentences  and  para- 


278  ORIGINALITY. 

graphs,  he  is  a  literary  thief,  and  as  such  deserves  to  be 
held  up  to  public  reprobation  and  scorn.  The  true  dis 
tinction  between  such  a  writer  and  the  one  who  gathers 
from  innumerable  sources  the  materials  which  he  fuses 
into  a  new  and  homogeneous  composition,  is  drawn  in  the 
well-known  colloquy  between  the  two  broom-sellers:  "I  do 
not  understand  how  you  undersell  me,"  said  one,  "for  I 
steal  my  materials."  "  The  explanation  is  simple,"  rejoined 
the  other;  "I  steal  my  brooms  ready  made."  Nobody 
ever  censured  Burke  for  expanding  the  "  like  a  cloud "  of 
Demosthenes  into  "  the  one  black  cloud  which  hung  for 
a  while  on  the  declivities  of  the  mountains";  but  what 
would  be  thought  of  Webster  or  Canning  if  the  former's 
fine  personification  of  the  power  and  glory  of  England, 
or  the  beautiful  and  elaborate  imagery  in  the  latter's  Ply 
mouth  speech,  should  turn  out  to-  have  been  baldly  copied? 
Are  we  asked,  then,  wherein  lies  the  merit  of  a  writer? 
We  answer,  in  his  form.  His  true  originality  lies  in  the 
plan  of  his  work  and  in  his  style, —  that  manner  of  expres 
sion  which  distinguishes  the  mould  of  his  genius  from  the 
mintage  of  any  other  brain.  Of  the  novelty  of  his  ideas 
he  can  have  no  guarantee,  but  the  form  in  which  they 
are  conveyed  is  his  own  peculiar  property.  He  may  use 
the  selfsame  facts  and  ideas  as  another,  yet  so  express, 
marshal  and  arrange  them  as  to  make  them  his  own,  and 
delight  us  with  a  new  and  original  product.  Two  archi 
tects  may  use  the  same  bricks,  and  produce  respectively 
a  palace  and  a  hovel.  All  painters  use  the  same  colors; 
but  one  is  a  Raphael  or  a  Titian,  the  other  exhausts  his 
genius  upon  the  sign-board  of  a  country  tavern. 


THE  ART  OF  LISTENING. 


A  GREAT  deal  has  been  written  on  the  art  of  speak- 
-£»-  ing;  but  a  treatise  on  the  art  of  listening  would  be 
more  valuable.  There  are  plenty  of  good  talkers  in  so 
ciety,  but  good  hearers  are  rare.  Carlyle's  discourses; 
preached  in  so  many  volumes,  with  sad  earnestness,  on  the 
text  "  Silence  is  golden,"  have  borne  thus  far  but  little 
fruit.  A  Frenchman  once  said  of  a  gentleman  in  com 
pany,  in  whom  he  could  detect  no  other  quality  worthy  of 
a  compliment,  that  he  had  "  a  great  talent  for  silence." 
This  apparent  equivoque  was  a  real  compliment,  for  of  all 
gifts  one  of  the  very  rarest  is  that  self-control  which 
enables  one  to  hold  his  tongue.  Few  persons  have  reflected 
how  difficult  it  is  to  command  that  attention  and  concen 
tration  of  mind  which  constitute  a  good  listener.  It  re 
quires  not  only  high  moral  but  also  rare  intellectual  quali^ 
ties.  It  is  not,  as  one  is  apt  to  suppose,  a  merely  passive 
state.  It  implies  positive  labor  of  mind,  close,  consecutive 
thinking,  and  sometimes  a  powerful  and  even  painful  effort 
of  the  will,  to  arrest  one's  own  train  of  ideas  or  dreamy 
reveries,  and  fix  the  mind  upon  the  thought  or  reasoning 
of  another. 

Besides  this  power  of  attention,  there  must  be  also 
great  power  of  sympathy, —  indeed,  the  latter  is  almost 
essential  to  the  former.  There  is  an  ear  of  the  soul  as 
well  as  of  the  body,  which  must  be  wide  open  if  one  would 
listen  well.  It  has  been  well  said  that  the  most  apprecia- 

279 


280  THE   ART   OF   LISTENING. 

tive  listening  is  done  with  the  eyes.  Man  cannot,  like  the 
lower  animals,  prick  up  his  ears  or  bend  them  forward 
when  he  wants  to  hear;  hence  the  look  of  the  eyes  is  the 
surest  test  of  attention.  All  the  other  marks  of  interest 
may  be  counterfeited.  The  manner  may  be  apparently  full 
of  respect,—  every  word  and  gesture  of  impatience  may  be 
repressed,— and  yet  the  wits  of  the  seeming  listener  may 
be  wool-gathering.  But  the  eye  refuses  to  dissemble.  By 
its  dull,  vacant  stare,  its  introspective  look,  or  its  restless 
wandering  from  place  to  place,  it  trill  betray  the  hypocrit 
ical  hearer  in  spite  of  every  attempt  at  deception.  Hence, 
no  unspoken  affront,  short  of  absolute  rudeness,  rouses 
resentment  so  readily  as  wandering  attention  manifested 
by  wandering  glances.  A  man's  thoughts  are  wont  to 
follow  his  eyes,  and  be  engrossed  by  what  they  see  rather 
than  by  what  he  hears. 

To-  sit  in  dumb  silence,  and  be  forever  a  recipient, —  a 
bucket  eternally  pumped  into,  without  power  of  reaction, 
as  Carlyle  somewhere  expresses  it, —  is  doubtless  good  for 
ho  man;  yet  most  men,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted,  would  be 
benefited  by  oftener  listening  in  place  of  talking.  It  is 
well,  at  times,  to  interchange  thought,  and  there  are  mo 
ments  when,  as  Sydney  Smith  said  of  his  jokes,  we  must  let 
out  our  ideas  or  burst;  yet  it  is  evidently  the  listener  who 
gets  the  richest  harvest  from  conversation.  It  has  been 
well  said  that  he  who  speaks,  sows, —  he  who  listens,  reaps, 
in  colloquy.  We  may  be  neither  wise  nor  witty;  but, 
listening  to  the  acute  and  learned,  we  may  make  their 
shrewdness  and  knowledge  in  a  measure  our  own.  In 
conversation  better  than  in  books  may  we  read  human 
nature;  and  a  sentiment  dropped  burning  from  the  lips 
settles  more  deeply  in  the  mind  than  the  finest  writing.  It 


THE   ART   OF   LISTEtfLN'G.  281 

was  Scott,  we  believe,  who  made  it  a  rule  to  pump  every 
man  upon  the  subjects  with  which  he  was  best  acquainted; 
and  thus  from  every  ride  in  a  stage-coach  brought  home 
some  fact,  hint,  or  trait  of  character,  which  added  to  the 
charm  of  his  writings.  All  men  have  their  hobbies,  which 
they  dearly  love  to  mount,—  their  strong  points,  the  sub 
jects  nearest  to  their  hearts,  and  upon  which  they  are  at 
home  in  conversation, —  and  happy  is  he  who  turns  this 
peculiarity  in  others  to  his  own  advantage.  Dr.  Johnson 
once  faced  a  fellow-traveler  in  a  stage-coach,  from  whom 
he  found  that  every  attempt  to  draw  out  a  scintilla  of  in 
formation  was  like  trying  to  extract  sunbeams  from  cucum 
bers.  "  Try  me  on  leather,"  said  the  poor  fellow  in  despair. 
The  Doctor  tried  him  on  leather,  and  found  that,  regarding 
that  topic,  he  had  both  soul  and  understanding.  "  The 
study  of  books,"  says  Montaigne,  "  is  a  languishing  and 
feeble  motion  that  heats  not;  but  if  I  converse  with  a  man 
of  mind,  and  no  flincher,  who  presses  hard  upon  me,  and 
digs  at  me  right  and  left,  his  imagination  raises  up  mine, 
it  stimulates  me  to  something  above  myself." 

Of  all  bores,  the  loquacious  are  the  most  disagreeable; 
the  society  enjoyed  by  such  is  generally  a  series  of  first 
invitations.  Burns  has  well  portrayed  them  in  his  de 
scription  of  the  "  venerable  corps "  of  excessively  good 
and  rigidly  righteous  people, —  whose  life  he  compares  to 
a  well-going  mill,  supplied  with  store  of  water,  and  whose 
machinery  goes  on  in  one  unvarying  clack,  their  hopper 
constantly  ebbing,  but  never  exhausted.  It  is  amusing 
to  see  how  one  of  these  persons,  who  has  been  gabbling 
for  an  hour  or  less,  drops  his  countenance  as  if  he  had 
been  shot,  or  seized  with  lockjaw,  the  moment  any  one  of 
his  hearers  interposes  a  single  remark.  On  the  contrary, 
12* 


284  THE   ART   OF   LISTENING. 

of  narrators  or  raconteurs.  Of  all  the  bores  whom  man 
in  his  folly  hesitates  to  hang,  the  most  insufferable,  he 
declares,  is  the  teller  of  "good  stories," — a  nuisance  which, 
he  asserts,  should  be  put  down  by  cudgeling,  by  submer 
sion  in  horse-ponds,  or  any  mode  of  abatement,  as  sum 
marily  as  men  would  combine  to  suffocate  a  vampire  or  a 
mad  dog. 

It  seems  to  be  an  almost  inevitable  result,  when  great 
wits  are  pitted  against  each  other  in  the  social  circle, 
that  the  wish  to  shine  prevents  the  conversation  from 
taking  an  easy,  natural  course.  Every  one  is  anxious  to 
seize  as  it  flies  by  the  opportune  moment  for  saying  his 
brilliant  things,  and  in  many  cases  the  apropos  is  very 
far-fetched.  Marinontel,  in  picturing  the  fine  conversa 
tions  of  his  day,  tells  us  that  in  Marivaux,  the  impatient 
wish  to  display  his  sagacity  and  finesse  was  conspicuously 
manifest.  Montesquieu  waited  with  more  calmness  till 
the  ball  should  come  to  him,  but  he  waited  for  it  never 
theless.  Mairan  watched  for  the  favorable  opportunity. 
Astruc  disdained  to  wait.  There  is,  perhaps,  hardly  any 
greater  nuisance  than  when  a  company  at  dinner,  or  in 
a  drawing-room,  are  compelled  to  listen  to  two  or  three 
literary  lions  who  are  trying  to  dazzle  it  with  their  bril 
liant  wit.  No  doubt  they  enjoy  this,  but  they  show  that 
they  lack  the  very  first  element  of  good  breeding,  which 
is  courtesy  ;  and  it  is  absurd  to  call  their  talk  conversa 
tion,  when  it  is  confined  to  themselves.  A  still  greater 
nuisance  is  when  two  men  interrupt  the  easy  flow  of  talk 
by  a  controversial  discussion.  As  De  Quincey  says,  "  mere 
good  sense  is  sufficient,  without  any  experience  at  all  of 
high  life,  to  point  out  the  intolerable  absurdity  of  allow 
ing  two  angry  champions  to  lock  up  and  sequestrate,  as 


THE    ART   OF   LISTENING.  285 

it  were,  the  whole  social  enjoyment  of  a  large  party,  and 
compel  them  to  sit  in  sad  civility,  witnesses  of  a  contest 
which  can  interest  the  majority  neither  by  its  final  object 
nor  by  its  management."  Listening  to  such  logomachy 
is  even  more  disagreeable  than  sitting  within  ear-shot  of 
"  the  young  college  don  who  solves  the  enigma  of  Free 
Will  and  constructs  a  Philosophy  of  Being  in  twenty  min 
utes." 

Hazlitt  tells  us  that  the  best  converser  he  ever  knew 
was  the  best  listener.  "  I  mean  Northoote,  the  painter. 
Painters,  by  their  profession,  are  not  bound  to  shine  in 
conversation,  and  they  shine  the  more.  He  lends  his  ear 
to  an  observation  as  if  you  had  brought  him  a  piece  of 
news,  and  enters  into  it  with  as  much  avidity  and  ear 
nestness  as  if  it  interested  him  personally."  Romilly  was 
a  similar  talker;  his  conversation  never  indicated  a  wish 
to  display,  but  flowed  from  the  abundance  of  a  refined 
and  richly  informed  understanding.  Carlyle,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  poor  listener.  He  gives  no  one  else  a  chance, 
but,  according  to  Margaret  Fuller,  bears  down  all  opposi 
tion,  not  only  by  his  wit  and  onset  of  words  resistless  in 
their  sharpness  as  so  many  bayonets,  but  by  actual  phys 
ical  superiority,  raising  his  voice  and  rushing  on  his  oppo 
nent  with  a  torrent  of  sound. 

It  is  said  that  Thiers,  the  late  French  president,  was 
an  interminable  monologist,  and  that  it  was  cfhly  when 
he  shaved  that  one  could  get  a  chance  of  being  listened 
to  by  him.  Only  while  the  razor  was  at  his  throat  was 
he  silent,  or  did  he  vouchsafe  attention.  Thiers  could 
speak  from  morning  till  night  unwearied,  with  ever  new 
sparkling  thoughts,  ever  new  plays  of  wit  flashing  forth, 
rejoicing  his  audience,  teaching,  blinding, —  in  short,  a 


284  THE   ART   OF   LISTENING. 

of  narrators  or  raconteurs.  Of  all  the  bores  whom  man 
in  his  folly  hesitates  to  hang,  the  most  insufferable,  he 
declares,  is  the  teller  of  "good  stories,1' — a  nuisance  which, 
he  asserts,  should  be  put  down  by  cudgeling,  by  submer 
sion  in  horse-ponds,  or  any  mode  of  abatement,  as  sum 
marily  as  men  would  combine  to  suffocate  a  vampire  or  a 
mad  dog. 

It  seems  to  be  an  almost  inevitable  result,  when  great 
wits  are  pitted  against  each  other  in  the  social  circle, 
that  the  wish  to  shine  prevents  the  conversation  from 
taking  an  easy,  natural  course.  Every  one  is  anxious  to 
seize  as  it  flies  by  the  opportune  moment  for  saying  his 
brilliant  things,  and  in  many  cases  the  apropos  is  very 
far-fetched.  Marmontel,  in  picturing  the  fine  conversa 
tions  of  his  day,  tells  us  that  in  Marivaux,  the  impatient 
wish  to  display  his  sagacity  and  finesse  was  conspicuously 
manifest.  Montesquieu  waited  with  more  calmness  till 
the  ball  should  come  to  him,  but  he  waited  for  it  never 
theless.  Mairan  watched  for  the  favorable  opportunity. 
Astruc  disdained  to  wait.  There  is,  perhaps,  hardly  any 
greater  nuisance  than  when  a  company  at  dinner,  or  in 
a  drawing-room,  are  compelled  to  listen  to  two  or  three 
literary  lions  who  are  trying  to  dazzle  it  with  their  bril 
liant  wit.  No  doubt  they  enjoy  this,  but  they  show  that 
they  lack  the  very  first  element  of  good  breeding,  which 
is  courtesy  ;  and  it  is  absurd  to  call  their  talk  conversa 
tion,  when  it  is  confined  to  themselves.  A  still  greater 
nuisance  is  when  two  men  interrupt  the  easy  flow  of  talk 
by  a  controversial  discussion.  As  De  Quincey  says,  "  mere 
good  sense  is  sufficient,  without  any  experience  at  all  of 
high  life,  to  point  out  the  intolerable  absurdity  of  allow 
ing  two  angry  champions  to  lock  up  and  sequestrate,  as 


THE    ART   OF   LISTENING.  285 

it  were,  the  whole  social  enjoyment  of  a  large  party,  and 
compel  them  to  sit  in  sad  civility,  witnesses  of  a  contest 
which  can  interest  the  majority  neither  by  its  final  object 
nor  by  its  management."  Listening  to  such  logomachy 
is  even  more  disagreeable  than  sitting  within  ear-shot  of 
"  the  young  college  don  who  solves  the  enigma  of  Free 
Will  and  constructs  a  Philosophy  of  Being  in  twenty  min 
utes." 

Hazlitt  tells  us  that  the  best  converser  he  ever  knew 
was  the  best  listener.  "  I  mean  Northoote,  the  painter. 
Painters,  by  their  profession,  are  not  bound  to  shine  in 
conversation,  and  they  shine  the  more.  He  lends  his  ear 
to  an  observation  as  if  you  had  brought  him  a  piece  of 
news,  and  enters  into  it  with  as  much  avidity  and  ear 
nestness  as  if  it  interested  him  personally."  Romilly  was 
a  similar  talker;  his  conversation  never  indicated  a  wish 
to  display,  but  flowed  from  the  abundance  of  a  refined 
and  richly  informed  understanding.  Carlyle,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  poor  listener.  He  gives  no  one  else  a  chance, 
but,  according  to  Margaret  Fuller,  bears  down  all  opposi 
tion,  not  only  by  his  wit  and  onset  of  words  resistless  in 
their  sharpness  as  so  many  bayonets,  but  by  actual  phys 
ical  superiority,  raising  his  voice  and  rushing  on  his  oppo 
nent  with  a  torrent  of  sound. 

It  is  said  that  Thiers,  the  late  French  president,  was 
an  interminable  monologist,  and  that  it  was  cftily  when 
he  shaved  that  one  could  get  a  chance  of  being  listened 
to  by  him.  Only  while  the  razor  was  at  his  throat  was 
he  silent,  or  did  he  vouchsafe  attention.  Thiers  could 
speak  from  morning  till  night  unwearied,  with  ever  new 
sparkling  thoughts,  ever  new  plays  of  wit  flashing  forth, 
rejoicing  his  audience,  teaching,  blinding, —  in  short,  a 


286  THE   ART   OF    LISTENING. 

spoken  firework.  The  colloquial  despotism  of  such  a  man 
is  comparatively  excusable;  yet  even  from  monopolists  of 
far  inferior  gifts  the  skillful  listener  will  glean  many 
kernels  of  wheat  among  the  chaff.  Madame  Geoffrin,  who 
was  impatient  of  prolonged  talk,  was  asked  how  she  could 
bear  the  conversation  of  a  very  tiresome  man  for  three 
or  four  hours.  "I  made  him  talk  of  himself  and  his  af 
fairs,"  was  the  reply,  "  and  in  talking  of  ourselves,  we 
become  interesting  to  others."  Sainte-Beuve  states  that 
one  day  when  she  saw  the  good  Abb<§  de  Saint-Pierre  in 
stalling  himself  at  her  house  for  a  whole  winter's  even 
ing,  she  was  frightened  for  a  moment,  but  drawing  in 
spiration  from  the  desperate  situation,  she  did  so  well 
that  she  utilized  the  worthy  abb£,  and  made  him  posi 
tively  amusing.  He  was  completely  astonished  at  it  him 
self;  and  when,  as  he  withdrew,  she  complimented  him 
upon  his  good  conversation,  saying:  "You  have  been  de 
lightful  to-day;  you  have  said  many  witty  things,"  he  re 
plied:  "Madame,  I  am  but  an  instrument;  you  have  played 
on  it  according  to  your  own  taste,  and  you  know  how  to 
sound  it." 


WHO  ARE  GENTLEMEN? 


"A  gentleman? 

What,  o'  the  wool-pack  ?  or  the  sugar  chest  ? 
Or  lists  of  velvet?  which  is't,  pound  or  yard, 
You  vend  your  gentry  by?" 

"T^vEMOCRATIC  as  we  profess  to  be  in  this  country, 
•*-^  and  though  we  are  as  fond  of  denouncing  aristo 
crats  as  were  the  "sansculottes"  at  the  beginning  of  the 
French  Revolution,  there  is,  nevertheless,  hardly  an  Ameri 
can  town  of  a  thousand  inhabitants  where  there  are  not 
certain  families  that  pique  themselves  on  being  "  genteel." 
But  what  do  they  mean  by  "genteel"?  The  word  is  one 
which  some  persons  have  continually  on  their  lips,  yet 
there  is  hardly  one,  perhaps,  between  the  two  covers  of 
Webster's  "Unabridged,"  the  precise  meaning  of  which 
they  would  be  more  sorely  puzzled  to  define.  Gentility, — 
what  is  it?  It  is  harder  to  define  than  the  term  with 
which  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  wont  to  puzzle  the  financiers, — 
"What  is  a  pound"?  We  all  have  some  dim,  shadowy 
ideas  of  the  thing;  but  what  mental  chemist  has  yet  ap 
peared  gifted  with  powers  so  subtle  as  to  analyze  the 
elements  of  this  mysterious  attribute  of  humanity;  or 
what  lexicographer,  living  or  dead,  has  presumed  to  ex 
pound  to  the  world  the  curious  substance  or  essence  of 
which  it  is  composed?  Ask  any  man  who  is  in  the  habit 
of  applying  and  denying  this  epithet  to  scores  of  his  spe- 

287 


WHO    ARE    GENTLEMEN? 

cies,  Who  or  what  is  a  gentleman?  and  the  chances  are 
that  you  will  get  a  reply  about  as  precise  and  satisfactory 
as  Bardolph's  definition  of  "accommodation";  gentleman, 

that   is    a  —  gentleman;    or   when    a   person    is  —  being 

whereby  — he  may  be  thought  to  be  a  gentleman;  which 
is  an  excellent  thing.  All  will  unhesitatingly  agree  that 
a  man  well  born,  having  an  independent  fortune,  an  up 
right,  generous,  high-minded  character,  with  courteous 
manner,  and  withal  good  clothes,  is  a  gentleman.  But  the 
puzzle  is  to  tell  how  many  of  these  qualities  is  essential 
to  give  one  a  claim  to  gentility,— for  it  is  on  this  point 
that  men's  sentiments  so  widely  vary.  Undoubtedly  there 
are  in  every  case  many  seemingly  trivial  but  really  im 
portant  circumstances  to  be  taken  into  account  before  we 
may  pronounce  a  man  to  be,  absolutely  and  unqualifiedly, 
a  gentleman;  and  hence,  it  behooves  us  always  to  be  ex 
ceedingly  cautious,  for  to  a  nice  mind,  ardently  engaged 
in  the  pursuit  of  truth,  a  hair's-breadth  distinction  is 
found  oftentimes  more  obstinately  irreconcilable  than  a 
glaring  discrepancy. 

Dr.  Johnson  defines  a  gentleman  as  a  man  of  birth, 
which  is  no  doubt  the  etymological  sense  of  the  word.  A 
gentleman  was  originally  a  man  of  noble  family,  or  gens, 
as  it  was  called  in  Latin.  How  the  barbarians  who  con 
quered  the  Romans  came  to  use  the  word  as  a  word  of 
honor,  has  been  much  disputed.  Some  say  that  as  the  bar 
barians  were  gentiles,  or  outer  nations  to  the  Romans,  their 
leaders  assumed  the  appellation  as  one  of  honor  to  dis 
tinguish  themselves  from  the  degenerate  people  they  had 
enslaved.  This  was  the  learned  Selden's  view,  but  Gibbon 
preferred  to  derive  the  word  from  the  civilian's  use  of  it 
as  synonymous  with  ingenuus.  A  "  gentle  "  (its  derivative) 


WHO    ARE   GENTLEMEN"?  289 

is  used  as  the  opposite  to  "simple."  Still  another  learned 
writer  asserts  that  no  one  is  strictly  a  gentleman  but  he 
who  can  trace  himself  to  the  first  barbarian  conquerors. 
The  term  is  evidently  one  of  great  antiquity,  as  the  uncer 
tainty  about  its  meaning  plainly  shows,  and  all  the  facts 
go  to  prove  that  gentility,  which  is  always  spoken  of  as 
a  matter  of  blood,  was  an  affair  of  race.  The  original 
gentlemen,  far  back  in  the  ages,  were  distinguished  by 
larger  size,  and  greater  strength  and  energy,  than  other 
men,  and  thus  became  their  governors  and  rulers.  In  the 
course  of  time  the  descendants  and  heirs  of  such  persons 
came  to  have  means  to  maintain  an  outward  show  of 
superior  elegance,  with  leisure  to  cultivate  the  graces  of 
social  life,  so  that  they  were  distinguished  from  the  labor 
ing  classes  by  greater  refinement  of  manners  and  a  more 
tasteful  dress.  To-day  neither  birth  nor  wealth,  nor  both 
together,  make  a  gentleman,  unless  other  qualities  are 
added;  and  even  a  person  of  the  meanest  birth,  if  en 
dowed  with  the  qualities  supposed  to  be  annexed  to  gentle 
blood,  is  often  entitled  a  gentleman  because  he  possesses 
a  gentleman's  nature.  Beau  Brummell,  at  one  time  the 
ideal  of  English  patricians,  was  the  son  of  a  petty  lodging- 
house  keeper,  and  the  grandson  of  a  menial  servant. 

This  peculiarity  of  English  society  has  always  been  a 
standing  puzzle  to  foreigners,  who  cannot  understand  how 
a  man  can  be  a  gentilhomme  who  is  not  gentilis,  or  of  noble 
race.  It  has  been  well  observed  that  what  the  foreigner 
means  by  this  expression  is  strictly  applicable  to  the  Eng 
lish  gentry,  who  are  descendants  of  the  old  feudal  land 
lords  and  bearers  of  coats  of  armor, —  are  gentilhommes  in 
the  primitive  sense  of  the  word,  and  so  noble;  while  the 
lord,  in  spite  of  his  peerage  and  coronet,  may  be  of  origin 
13 


290  WHO    ARE    GENTLEMEN? 

almost  immediately  plebeian.  "  How  is  it,"  writes  Tocque- 
ville  in  1853,  "  that  the  word  gentleman,  which  in  our  lan 
guage  denotes  a  mere  superiority  of  blood,  with  you  is  now 
used  to  express  a  certain  social  position  and  amount  of 
education  independent  of  birth;  so  that  in  two  countries 
the  same  word,  though  the  sound  remains  the  same,  has 
entirely  changed  its  meaning?  When  did  this  revolution 
take  place?  How,  and  through  what  transitions?  If  I 
had  the  honor  of  a  personal  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Ma- 
caulay,  I  should  venture  to  write  to  ask  him  these  ques 
tions.  In  the  excellent  history  which  he  is  now  publishing 
he  alludes  to  this  fact,  but  he  does  not  try  to  explain  it." 
These  questions,  which  were  put  to  Macaulay,  and  which 
he  could  not  answer,  have  been  answered  with  very  poor 
success  by  M.  Taine,  in  his  "Notes  on  England."  He  sees 
clearly,  however,  that  the  word  has  in  England  no  fixed 
and  well-defined  meaning,  being  indiscriminately  used  to 
express  birth,  an  independent  fortune,  habits  of  luxury 
and  ease,  education,  tone  of  mind,  bearing  and  manners, 

in  conjunction  or  apart.     Thus  B ,   when  he   said  to 

M.  Taine,  of  "  a  great  lord,  a  diplomatist,"  that  he  was 
"no  gentleman,"  referred  to  manners,  conduct,  or  char 
acter.  Archdeacon  Hare  declares  that  "  a  Christian  is  the 
Almighty's  gentleman;  a  gentleman,  in  the  vulgar,  super 
ficial  way  of  understanding  the  word,  is  the  devil's  Chris 
tian."  I)r.  Arnold  wrote  from  France  that  he  was  struck 
by  the  total  absence  of  gentlemen  there,  whether  the 
people  were  judged  by  their  appearance  and  manners,  or 
by  their  education  and  sentiments;  and  he  doubted  whether 
a  real  English  Christian  gentleman,  of  manly  heart  and 
enlightened  mind,  was  not  more  than  Guizot  or  Sismondi 
could  comprehend.  An  English  reviewer  increases  the  con- 


WHO    ARE    GENTLEMEN?  291 

fusion  by  quoting  "the  well  known  Irish  boast"  that  an 
Irish  gentleman  would  be  the  most  perfect  gentleman  in 
the  world  if  you  could  but  meet  with  him. 

That  eminent  professor  of  gentility,  Lord  Chesterfield, 
deemed  wealth  a  sine  qua  non  of  a  gentleman.  But  money 
alone,  it  is  clear,  cannot  make  a  gentleman,  though  there 
are  many  occasions  when,  to  entitle  one's  self  to  that  ap 
pellation,  it  is  very  necessary  to  have  a  good  supply  of 
bank-notes.  "You  are  no  gentleman,"  said  a  boot-black 
in  a  tavern  to  a  guest  who  had  given  him  but  five  cents, — 
all  the  change  he  had  in  his  wallet.  Here,  in  the  eyes  of 
"  boots,"  the  payment  of  five  cents  additional  would  have 
constituted  the  gentleman.  "  What  sort  of  a  person  is 
that  new  boarder  of  yours?"  asked  a  lady  of  the  land 
lord  of  a  hotel.  "  He  is  a  printer  by  trade,"  was  the  reply, 
"  but  is  very  much  the  gentleman."  In  this  case,  being  a 
gentleman  implied  chiefly  the  regular  and  prompt  payment 
of  bills.  In  England  a  gentleman  need  not  pay  his  debts 
unless  his  creditor  has  no  security  but  his  bare  word,  and 
financial  obligations  which  relate  to  horses  are  sacred  above 
all  other  obligations.  Maginn,  in  "  Old  Ebony,"  quoted 
an  Irish  authority  who  laid  it  down  that  for  duelling  pur 
poses  any  one  might  be  considered  a  gentleman  who  wore 
a  clean  shirt  once  a  week.  An  English  writer  says  that 
in  the  snuggery  of  an  inn  bar  the  appellation  is  in  great 
request;  and  to  descend  to  the  bottom  of  the  scale,  he  has 
more  than  once  heard  a  prisoner  in  the  dock  declaring  that 
"  he  warn't  a  doin'  nufnn'  till  the  genelman  kem  and  tuk 
him  up," — an  epithet  which  has  a  bland  and  conciliatory 
influence  on  the  policeman. 

The  Byronic  idea  of  a  gentleman  is  well  known, —  small 
hands  and  feet,  high  forehead,  curly  hair,  and  a  delicate 


292  WHO   ABE   GENTLEMEN"? 

taste  for  gin  at  night  and  hock  and  soda  water  in  the 
morning.  In  the  year  1500  a  gentleman  is  represented 
as  saying:  "To  blow  a  neat  blast  on  the  horn,  to  under 
stand  hunting,  to  carry  a  hawk  handsomely  and  train  it, 
that  is  what  becomes  the  son  of  a  gentleman;  but  as  for 
book  learning,  he  should  leave  that  to  louts"  In  the  time  of 
Charles  the  Second,  both  gentlemen  and  ladies  prided  them 
selves  on  the  fact  that  they  could  not  spell  the  commonest 
words  correctly.  To  do  nothing  for  a  livelihood  has  long 
been  the  extra-legal  definition, —  a  remarkable  illustration 
of  which  was  given  in  England,  in  an  assault  case  some 
years  ago,  at  the  Middlesex  sessions.  A  prosecutor  was 
asked  if  he  was  a  gentleman;  he  replied  in  the  affirma 
tive,  and  being  next  asked  if  he  had  not  been  an  omnibus- 
driver,  he  replied:  "Not  for  a  living."  "Will  you  swear 
you  have  not  been  an  omnibus-driver?"  pressed  the  de 
fendant's  attorney.  "I  am  a  gentleman,"  was  the  answer, 
"  but  I  have  driven  an  omnibus  by  way  of  amusement. 
I  never  did  anything  to  earn  a  living."  According  to  this 
theory,  one  may  be  an  omnibus-driver  and  even  a  clown, 
—  for  such  the  prosecutor  had  been, —  and  yet  not  forfeit 
one's  claim  to  be  a  gentleman,  provided  he  does  it  in  idle 
ness,  or  from  a  positive  taste  for  the  business.  The  for 
feiture  of  the  gentle  condition  lies  in  acting  from  a  sordid 
motive.  This  view  was  confirmed,  about  thirty  years  ago, 
by  a  decision  in  an  English  bankruptcy  court.  A  person 
offered  as  a  surety  was  objected  to  by  counsel  because, 
while  he  was  described  as  "a  gentleman,"  he  was  really 
a  clerk  in  a  steam-packet  company.  The  objection,  which 
would  have  been  considered  ridiculous  by  a  genealogist 
or  a  herald,  was  held  to  be  fatal.  According  to  Aristotle, 
all  forms  of  labor  which  require  physical  strength  are 


WHO    ARE   GEKTLEMEIST  ?  293 

degrading  to  a  freeman.  The  prince  Lee  Boo,  who  con 
cluded  that  in  England  the  hog  was  the  only  gentleman 
because  he  was  the  only  animal  that  did  not  labor,  had 
some  grounds  for  his  opinion.  In  Otaheite,  a  chieftain  is 
fed  by  his  attendants  like  a  baby,  because  it  does  not  com 
port  with  his  dignity  to  feed  himself.  As  a  rule,  a  calling 
is  against  a  man  in  England,  with  the  exception  of  the 
aristocratic  professions;  and  even  these  an  Edinburgh  Re 
viewer  thinks  should  be  avoided,  as  the  gentleman  par  emi 
nence  should  resemble  Voltaire's  trees,  of  which,  when  a 
visitor  was  complimenting  him  on  their  looking  so  fine 
and  flourishing,  the  wit  said:  "Yes,  they  ought,  for  they 
have  nothing  else  to  do." 

In  the  estimation  of  the  vulgar, —  "the  great  vulgar 
and  the  small,1'  as  Cowley  classes  them, —  genteel  clothes 
are  one  of  the  main  characteristics  of  a  gentleman.  "  Why 
do  you  call  him  a  gentleman?"  asked  a  magistrate  in  one 
of  our  cities  of  a  sailor,  who  had  charged  a  youth,  whom 
he  described  as  a  gentleman,  with  robbing  him.  "  Because 
he  wore  a  long-tailed  coat"  replied  the  tar.  There  is  some 
thing  peculiarly  significant  in  the  unhesitating  readiness 
and  confidence  of  this  reply.  Honest  Jack  well  knew  the 
defendant's  moral  obliquities;  he  knew  he  had  violated  the 
laws  of  God  and  man;  he  knew  that  it  was  only  by  false 
promises  to  Snip  the  tailor  that  he  was  enabled  to  "  cut 
a  figure"  in  fashionable  apparel;  but  still  there  was  no 
getting  over  the  stubborn  fact, —  he  wore  a  long- tailed 
coat,  and  so  long  as  he  did  so  it  was  impossible  to  impugn 
his  claim  to  be  a  gentleman.  Let  those  who  unthinkingly 
laugh  at  Jack's  beau  ideal  of  gentility  turn  their  eyes  in 
ward  to  their  own  ideas  on  the  subject,  and  ask  themselves 
if  their  own  sentiments  are  not  often  quite  as  ridiculous. 


294  WHO    ARE    GENTLEMEN  ? 

Are  there  not  many  occasions  when  they  peremptorily  de 
cide  a  man  to  be  no  gentleman  because  he  wears  a  brown 
coat  instead  of  a  black  one,  a  frock  instead  of  a  dress  coat, 
or  carries  a  red  handkerchief  instead  of  a  white  one  ?  The 
essential  qualities  of  a  gentleman  depend  neither  upon  the 
tailor  nor  upon  the  toilet;  and  yet  a  decent  regard  to  dress 
and  cleanliness  is  evidently  one  of  the  marks  of  a  gentle 
man.  A  scavenger  would  hardly  be  regarded  as  a  gentle 
man,  though  he  might  have  many  gentlemanly  qualities; 
but  a  man  of  the  noblest  blood  and  finest  manners,  who 
despises  him  because  he  is  a  scavenger,  is  assuredly  not 
a  gentleman.  It  is  said  that  Burke,  when  a  person  ex 
pressed  surprise  because  he  touched  his  hat  to  a  footman, 
replied:  "Sir,  would  you  have  me  outdone  in  courtesy  by  a 
footman?  " 

Some  persons  regard  politeness  as  the  criterion  of  a 
gentleman.  It  is  true  that  one  cannot  be  a  gentleman 
without  being  polite;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  equally 
true  that  one  may  be  polite  without  being  a  gentleman. 
A  man  may  very  politely  lie;  borrow  money,  which  he 
never  means  to  return,  in  the  politest  way  possible;  or 
politely  make  you  a  present  of  articles  which  he  has 
stolen.  He  may  be  profligate,  licentious,  knavish,  selfish, 
a  blackleg,  gambler, —  nay,  an  assassin  even, —  yet  a  very 
Castlereagh  in  his  manners.  He  may,  in  fine,  be  a  per 
fectly  gentlemanlike  or  polite  scoundrel;  but  a  scoundrel 
certainly  cannot  be  a  gentleman. 

Of  all  men,  Robert  Burns  seems  to  have  had  the  most 
eccentric  and  hopelessly  unfashionable  notions  of  what 
makes  a  gentleman.  Think  of  the  more  than  Egyptian 
darkness  of  one  who  could  write  thus  wildly: 


WHO    ARE   GENTLEMEN?  295 

What  though  on  homely  fare  we  dine, 

Wear  hodden  gray  and  a'  that, 
Gi'e  fools  their  silk,  and  knaves  their  wine, 

A  man's  a  man  for  a'  that." 

James  the  First  had  notions  equally  eccentric  on  this 
subject.  When  his  nurse  followed  him  from  Edinburgh  to 
London  to  entreat  him  to  make  her  son  a  gentleman, — "My 
good  dame,1'  said  the  king,  "I  can  make  him  a  lord,  but 
it  is  out  of  my  power  to  make  him  a  gentleman."  Yet 
one  of  his  predecessors  did  create  a  gentleman, —  John 
Kingston,  whom  ad  ordinem  generosorum  adoptabat, —  but 
the  case  stands  alone.  Sir  Robert  Peel  declared  that 
in  such  and  all  other  cases  "it  took  three  generations  to 
make  a  gentleman."  The  reason  of  this  doubtless  is  the 
opinion  that  some  portion  of  the  vulgarity  of  the  founder 
of  a  family  will  descend  to  his  immediate  descendants  who 
have  been  reared  with  him;  and  that  it  is  only  by  those 
who  have  been  ahvays  in  the  class  of  gentry  that  their 
habits  and  manners  will  be  exhibited  unconsciously  and  in 
every  respect. 

That  gentility  builds  a  high  partition  wall  around  the 
persons  who  practice  it, —  a  wall  which,  like  a  sunk  fence 
in  an  English  park,  is  not  seen  in  the  distance,  but  is  very 
hard  to  climb  over, —  we  all  know;  and  perhaps  the  most 
puzzling  fact  about  this  wall  is  that,  like  the  horizon,  as 
you  advance  toward  it,  it  continually  flies  before  you. 
Some  men  claim  to  be  genteel  on  account  of  their  birth, 
others  on  account  of  their  clothes;  some  base  their  preten 
sions  on  a  door-plate ;  some  are  genteel  because  their  great- 
great-grandfathers  were  colonels  in  the  militia,  others  be 
cause  they  are  justices  of  the  peace;  one  family  by  a  front 
pew  at  church,  another  by  a  private  box  at  the  opera; 


296  WHO  .ARE    GENTLEMEN? 

some  because  they  are  related  to  the  Simpkinses,  others 
because  they  reside  on  the  same  street  with  the  Simpkinses. 
Some  writers  have  attempted  to  define  gentility  by  neg 
atives,  which  is  certainly  easier  than  to  do  it  by  positives. 
Thus,  a  late  English  author  complains  that  it  is  not  genteel 
to  earn  your  bread;  but  it  is  highly  genteel  to  work  at 
some  utterly  worthless  and  silly  piece  of  finery,  and  to 
sell  the  same  in  the  name  of  charity  at  a  fancy  fair.  It 
is  never  genteel  to  speak  your  mind,  but  it  is  so  to  use 
a  false  periphrasis,  and  with  a  complimentary  turn  to  inti 
mate  a  falsehood.  It  is  not  genteel  to  have  any  opinion, 
and  to  think  for  yourself ;  but  it  is  so  to  follow  the  dic 
tates  of  an  injurious  fashion,  even  if  they  should  be  in 
jurious  to  the  health,  or  positively  immoral  and  noxious 
to  the  soul.  It  is  a  curious  fact  connected  with  this  sub 
ject,  that,  in  spite  of  its  metaphysical  difficulties,  women, 
from  their  Superior  acuteness  and  delicacy  of  discrimina 
tion,  divide  and  subdivide  gentility  as  easily  as  quicksilver. 
They  have  their  "  respectable  sort  of  people,"  "  very  re 
spectable,"  "  highly  respectable,"  "  extremely  respectable," 
and  "  most  respectable,"  ranging  from  the  lowest  positive 
to  the  highest  superlative,  each  weighed  in  a  verbal  hair- 
balance,  and  as  distinctive  in  their  minds  as  the  degrees 
of  hot,  hotter,  hottest,  on  the  scale  of  a  thermometer.  In 
spite  of  this  conflict  of  opinions,  and  though  the  boundary 
between  the  genteel  and  the  ungenteel  is  vague  and  shad 
owy,  yet  we  feel,  like  the  genteel  young  barber  in  Dickens's 
story,  that  "  we  must  draw  a  line  somewheres."  Being  a 
shaver  of  the  chins  of  genteel  persons  only,  he  refused, 
upon  a  notable  occasion,  to  reap  the  stubble  from  a  dust 
man's.  "  Why,"  cried  the  injured  individual,  his  gentility 
being  touched,  "  I  seed  you  a  shavin'  a  baker  t'other  day." 


WHO    AEE    GENTLEMEN?  297 

"Ah!"  returned  the  hair-dresser,  "we  must  draw  a  line 
somewheres;  I  draws  it  at  journeymen  bakers;  I  can't  shave 
you.1'  In  England  one  of  the  most  unerring  tests  of  gen 
tility  is  propriety  of  conduct  and  demeanor, —  a  rigid  ob 
servance  of  "  the  linen  decencies  "  of  life.  No  merit  quite 
counteracts  the  want  of  this,  whilst  this  sometimes  stands 
in  lieu  of  all.  According  to  this  theory,  a  man  who  rigidly 
observes  the  rules  of  etiquette, —  who  never  pours  his  tea 
into  a  saucer,  nor  eats  his  peas  with  a  knife,  nor  speaks  in 
company  without  an  introduction,  etc.  etc. —  is  a  gentleman; 
and  hence  George  IV,  who  was  so  ignorant  that  he  could 
hardly  spell,  and  who  in  heart  and  soul  was  a  thorough 
snob, — whom  Thackeray  has  described  as  "  a  waistcoat,  an 
under-waistcoat,  another  under-waistcoat,  and  then  noth 
ing," —  was  pronounced,  on  the  ground  of  his  grand  and 
suave  manners,  "the  first  gentleman  of  Europe";  an  ap 
pellation  which  would  be  regarded  as  an  exquisite  sarcasm, 
did  we  not  know  that  it  was  given  in  all  seriousness. 

One  of  the  most  daring  and  decided  opinions  that  we 
have  known  to  be  volunteered  concerning  the  meaning  of 
this  perplexing  term  was  that  given  by  a  witness  in  Thur- 
tell's  case,  who,  on  being  asked  by  the  judge  his  reason  for 
affirming  that  the  defendant  was  a  gentleman,  replied: 
"  Because  he  keeps  a  gig."  In  this  brief  answer  we  have 
a  flood  of  light  on  the  subject;  volumes  could  not  have 
shed  more.  On  the  whole,  it  may  be  questioned  whether 
there  is  any  more  patent  or  glaring  test  of  what  is  popu 
larly  regarded  as  gentility,  adapted  to  all  countries,  chal 
lenging  as  it  does  the  eyes  of  all  the  world,  than  a  car 
riage.  In  England  carriages  are  of  as  many  grades  as 
there  are  shades  of  rank: — the  ducal  carriage,  with  its 
liveried  footmen  and  apoplectic  coachman,  the  lordly  Ian- 


298  WHO    ARE    OEXTLEMEtf? 

dau,  the  easy  caliche,  the  elegant  barouche,  the  dashing 
phaeton,  the  comfortable  chariot,  the  luxurious  vis- a  vis,  the 
economical  clarence,  the  brougham,  etc.,  all  mark  so  many 
degrees  on  the  barometer  of  respectability.  Quite  differ 
ent  from  this  and  all  the  preceding  tests  was  the  opinion 
of  gentility  given  by  an  Irish  gentleman,  whose  debts  more 
than  doubled  his  estate.  Some  person  having  spoken  be 
fore  him  of  a  man  who  had  the  reputation  of  being  a 
gentleman, — "He  a  gentleman!  he"!  was  the  indignant 
reply;  "  why,  it  is  impossible.  Do  you  know  that  the  fel 
low  never  owed  a  hundred  dollars  in  his  life?  "  The  gentle 
Isaiah  Rynders,  who  acted  as  marshal  at  the  time  the  pirate 
Hicks  was  executed  in  New  York,  had  doubtless  similar 
notions  of  gentility,  for,  after  conversing  a  moment  with 
the  culprit,  he  said  to  the  bystanders:  "I  asked  the  gentle 
man  if  he  desired  to  address  the  audience,  but  he  declined." 
In  a  similar  spirit  Booth,  the  assassin,  when  he  was  sur 
rounded  in  the  barn  where  he  was  shot  like  a  beast,  offered 
to  pledge  his  word  "as  a  gentleman'1'1  to  come  out  and  try  to 
shoot  one  or  two  of  his  captors. 

Whatever  the  difficulty  attending  the  solution  of  this 
question,  of  one  thing  we  may  be  sure, —  that  there  cannot 
be  a  surer  proof  of  low  origin,  or  of  an  innate  meanness 
of  disposition,  than  to  be  always  thinking  and  prating  of 
being  genteel.  The  most  vulgar  of  all  things  is  preten 
sion,  for  it  is  the  sign  of  a  low  and  vulgar  mind.  All  the 
homeliness  of  the  poor,  the  gaucherles  and  blunders  of  the 
unpolished,  and  even  the  provincialisms  of  the  illiterate, 
are  as  the  dust  in  the  balance  as  regards  vulgarity,  com 
pared  with  the  affectation  that  is  always  trying  to  seem 
fine.  The  one  thing  which  distinguishes  the  truly  great, 
either  by  birth  or  mental  acquirements,  is  repose.  A  great 


WHO    ARE   GENTLEMEN?  299 

man  never  strains  and  tries  to  make  himself  greater  than 
he  is,  any  more  than  a  giant  tries  to  stand  upon  tiptoe. 
Both  are  conscious  of  their  own  true  height;  and  this  con 
sciousness  is  so  true  that  it  is  found  and  recognized,  not 
only  in  the  leaders  of  the  ton  in  Paris,  but  in  the  Hindoo 
and  Chinese  gentleman,  and  in  the  Indian  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains.  The  true  secret,  the  quintessence  of  all  gentle- 
manhood,  is  a  quiet,  undemonstrative  bearing,  and  a  dis 
position  to  look  upon  others  as  being  as  worthy  as  one's 
self.  There  can  be  no  greater  mistake,  therefore,  than  to 
suppose,  as  many  do,  that  gentlemanliness  is  an  outward 
thing,  a  matter  of  form  and  ceremony,  and  that  its  essence 
lies  in  a  punctilious  observance  of  etiquette, —  in  the  ele 
gant  bow,  the  five  minutes'  call,  the  courteous  and  polished 
speech,  the  graceful  restoration  of  a  fan,  the  quick  pres 
entation  of  a  dropped  handkerchief,  and  other  forms  of 
exterior  behavior  which  may  indicate  a  knowledge  of  "  fash 
ionable  life,"  yet  spring  from  a  heart  full  of  the  intensest 
selfishness.  True  politeness  is  not  a  thing  of  formality 
and  ceremony;  it  consists  in  no  artificial  smiles  or  precise 
carriage  of  the  body,  but  in  an  earnest  and  sincere  desire 
to  promote  the  happiness  of  those  with  whom  one  comes 
in  contact, —  in  a  willingness  to  sacrifice  one's  own  ease 
and  comfort  to  the  enjoyment  of  others. 

The  poor  negro  woman  who  found  Mungo  Park  perish 
ing  under  the  palm  trees  of  Africa,  and  who  led  him  to 
her  hut  and  supplied  him  with  food,  and  lulled  him  to 
sleep  with  her  simple  songs,  it  has  been  justly  said  was 
truly  polite.  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  the  glass  of  English 
knighthood,  was  most  truly  a  gentleman  when,  as  he  lay 
bleeding  upon  the  field  of  Zutphen,  he  denied  himself  the 
draught  of  cool  water  that  was  brought  to  quench  his 


300  WHO   ABE   GENTLEMEN"? 

mortal  thirst  that  it  might  be  given  to  a  dying  soldier. 
Joseph  Paice,  the  London  merchant  of  whom  Charles 
Lamb  wrote  as  follows,  was  a  gentleman  intus  et  in  cute: 
"I  have  seen  him  stand  bareheaded,  smile,  if  you  please, 
to  a  poor  servant  girl  while  she  has  been  inquiring  of  him 
the  way  to  some  street,  in  such  a  posture  of  unforced 
civility  as  neither  to  embarrass  her  in  the  acceptance  nor 
himself  in  the  offer  of  it.  He  was  no  dangler,  in  the 
common  acceptation  of  the  term,  after  women,  but  he  rev 
erenced,  and  upheld  in  eve-ry  form  in  which  it  came  before 
him,  womanhood.  I  have  seen  him, —  nay,  smile  not, —  ten 
derly  escorting  a  market-woman  whom  he  had  encountered 
in  a  shower,  exalting  his  umbrella  over  her  poor  basket 
of  fruit  that  it  might  receive  no  damage,  with  as  much 
carefulness  as  if  she  had  been  a  countess.  To  the  rev 
erend  form  of  Female  Eld  he  would  yield  the  wall,  though 
it  were  to  an  ancient  beggar-woman,  with  more  ceremony 
than  we  can  afford  to  show  our  grandams.  He  was  the 
Preux  Chevalier  of  his  age;  the  Sir  Calidore  or  Sir  Tristan 
to  those  who  have  no  Tristans  to  defend  them.  The  roses 
that  had  long  faded  thence  still  bloomed  for  him  in  those 
withered  and  yellow  cheeks." 

A  story  is  told  of  a  poor  drover  who  was  driving  his 
cattle  to  market,  and  meeting  a  lady  whom  the  drove  com 
pelled  to  turn  out  from  the  path  into  the  deep  snow, — 
"  Madam,"  said  he,  "  if  the  cattle  knew  as  well  as  I 
what  they  should  do,  you  should  not  walk  in  the  snow." 
Here  was  genuine  politeness.  Such  a  man,  though  rough 
and  awkward  in  his  manners,  coarse  in  his  speech,  and 
clad  in  homespun,  is  essentially  a  gentleman;  while  many 
a  finical  and  smirking  ape,  who  prides  himself  upon  the 
immaculate  purity  of  his  white  kid  gloves,  and  the  grace- 


WHO   ARE    GENTLEMEN?  301 

ful  air  with  which  he  enters  a  drawing-room,  or  lifts 
his  hat  as  he  meets  an  acquaintance,  is  an  incarnation 
of  rudeness  and  incivility. 

Robert  Burns  showed  himself  a  gentleman  when  jew 
eled  duchesses  were  charmed  with  his  ways;  and  so  did 
Dr.  Arnold,  when  the  poor  woman  felt  that  he  treated  her 
like  a  lady;  and  Chalmers,  when  every  old  woman  in  Morn- 
ingside  was  elated  by  his  courteous  salute.  Dr.  Hopkins 
showed  himself  a  gentleman,  when  seeing  a  delicate  wom 
an  once  nauseated  by  coming  into  an  atmosphere  which  he 
and  his  brethren  had  polluted  with  tobacco  smoke,  he  put 
away  the  almost  universal  clerical  pipe  of  which  he  was 
so  fond,  never  to  take  it  up  again.  But  Johnson,  who 
silenced  an  objector  with  "  Sir,  I  perceive  that  you  are  a 
vile  Whig,"  who  ate  his  food  like  a  famished  wolf,  and  who 
deferred  so  little  to  his  friends  that  they  could  differ  from 
him  only  in  silence,  was  not  a  gentleman,  though  he  had 
many  manly  qualities.  Nor  was  Lord  Chesterfield  a  gen 
tleman,  though  he  had  blue  blood  in  his  veins,  and  dis 
played  all  the  outward  characteristics  of  a  gentleman,  be 
cause  beneath  his  exquisitely  polished  manners  lay  the  heart 
of  a  libertine  and  the  soul  of  a  sneak.  His  famous  "  Let 
ters,'1  once  so  lauded  as  a  manual  of  deportment,  embody 
a  false  philosophy,  because  they  are  based  upon  the  idea 
that  polite  manners  consist  only  of  external  graces,  and  can 
be  learned  by  rule.  The  truth  is,  that  the  essential  char 
acteristics  of  a  gentleman  are  not  an  outward  varnish  or 
veneer,  but  inward  qualities,  developed  in  the  heart.  They 
are  a  form,  not  a  garment  of  the  mind,  and  cannot  be  put 
on  or  off  at  will.  They  are  the  outgrowth  of  a  noble  and 
kindly  nature,  which  manifests  itself  in  spontaneous  acts 
of  courtesy  and  grace.  Hence  the  absurdity  of  the  remark 


302  WHO    ARE    GENTLEMEN? 

we  sometimes  hear  that  a  certain  person  "  can  be  a  gentle 
man  when  he  pleases."  The  truth  is,  that  he  who  can  be 
a  gentleman  when  he  pleases  never  pleases  to  be  anything 
else.  A  man  may  simulate  the  outward  marks  of  a  gentle- 
Ynan,  speaking  with  practiced  intonation,  and  bowing  with 
well  studied  grace,  though  he  is  vulgar  to  the  very  core; 
but  he  will  lack  the  charm  of  unconsciousness  which  is  one 
of  nature's  finest  gifts,  the  grace  that  is  beyond  the  reach 
of  art,  and  will  be  no  more  a  gentleman  in  thought  and 
feeling  than  the  tinseled  actor  who  struts  during  his  brief 
hour  on  the  stage  is  the  monarch  his  costume  would  be 
speak  him.  A  celebrated  actress,  who  had  to  personate 
queens  on  the  stage,  said  that  she  found  it  was  absurd  to 
attempt  to  be  a  queen  during  two  or  three  hours  in  a  day 
when  she  had  not  acted  and  felt  as  a  queen  during  the 
rest  of  the  day;  and  so  the  man  who  is  a  "  gentleman 
when  he  chooses  to  be  "  only  personates  the  character, — 
never  is  what  he  purports  to  be.  He  has  the  smell  of  the 
footlights  about  him,  and  can  never  cheat  a  practiced  eye. 

"  The  churl  in  spirit,  howe'er  he  veil 
His  want  in  forms,  for  fashion's  sake, 
Will  let  his  coltish  nature  break 
At  seasons  through  the  gilded  pale." 

The  first  principle  of  all  true  politeness  is  deference, 
manly,  genial,  natural  deference;  and  this  can  be  no  more 
acquired  by  studying  manuals  of  deportment  than  a  man 
can  become  a  swimmer  by  reading  treatises  on  hydrostatics, 
or  a  statesman  by  studying  parliamentary  debates.  To  the 
attainment  of  this  end  familiarity  with  St.  John  and  St. 
Paul  will  conduce  more  than  all  the  books  of  etiquette 
that  were  ever  published.  The  latter  teach  only  external 


WHO    ARE    GENTLEMEN?  303 

politeness,  which,  as  we  have  already  said,  is  only  the  husk 
or  shell  of  true  politeness, —  is,  in  fact,  so  far  as  the  es 
sence  of  the  thing  is  concerned,  no  politeness  at  all,  though 
with  many  it  is  the  hinge  upon  which  all  their  social  con 
duct  turns,  while  in  mingling  with  others  of  a  different 
temperament  they  freeze,  as  does  the  wintry  air  in  nature, 
the  kindlier  feelings  of  the  heart,  and  reduce  everything 
to  a  smooth  surface,  polished  but  cold,  like  a  sheet  of  ice. 
Many  a  man  who  is  rough  and  even  boorish  in  manners 
has  a  warm  and  generous  heart;  and  many  a  one  who  is 
reckless  of  the  comfort  of  others  seeks  by  a  scrupulous 
observance  of  etiquette  and  ceremony  to  hide  his  real  in 
difference  to  the  happiness  of  his  fellow  men.  When  we 
see  a  person  who  evinces  on  all  occasions  a  delicate  regard 
for  the  rights  and  feelings  of  others,  however  inferior  in 
wealth,  dress  or  station;  "who  is  slow  to  take  offense,  as 
being  one  that  never  gives  it,  and  who  is  slow  to  surmise 
evil,  as  being  one  that  never  thinks  it;"  who  betrays  no 
anxiety  to  engross  the  best  seats  at  the  public  table,  in  the 
car,  or  in  the  concert- room;  who  at  his  meals  prefers  to 
carve  for  others  the  juiciest  slices,  rather  than  for  himself ; 
who  speaks  as  respectfully  to  a  peasant  as  he  would  to  a 
king,  and  is  as  prompt  to  offer  his  umbrella  in  a  rainstorm 
to  an  old  lady  as  to  a  young  one;  when,  in  short,  we  see  a 
person  acting  always  upon  the  golden  rule  of  doing  unto 
others  "  whatsoever  he  would  that  they  should  do  unto 
him," — then  we  feel  that  we  have  looked  upon  one  who 
is,  in  all  the  essential  elements,  a  gentleman.  But,  after 
all  our  attempts  to  define  that  whose  essential  quality  is  as 
subtle  as  the  aroma  of  a  flower,  we  may  conclude  that  the 
highest  significance  of  the  term  was  reached  in  the  rev 
erential  language  of  Dekker,  who  called  the  founder  of 


304  WHO   ARE   GENTLEMEN? 

Christianity  "  the  first  true  gentleman  that  ever  breathed/' 
Chaucer,  too,  in  his  "  Romaunt  of  the  Rose,"  has  given  an 
exquisite  picture  of  the  true  gentleman  : 

"But  understand  in  thine  entent 
That  this  is  not  mine  entendement 
To  clepe  no  wight  in  no  ages 
Only  gentle  for  his  linages; 
But  who  is  so  virtuous, 
And  in  his  port  not  outrageous, 
When  such  one  thou  seest  thee  beforne, 
Though  he  be  not  gentle  borne, 
Thou  maiest  well  saine  this  in  soth 
That  he  is  gentle,  because  he  doth 
As  longeth  to  a  gentleman." 


OFFICE -SEEKING. 


The  rising  unto  place  is  laborious,  and  by  pains  men  come  to 
greater  pains;  and  it  is  sometimes  base,  and  by  indignities  men 
come  to  dignities.  —  BACON. 


years  ago  a  Washington  letter-  writer,  describing 
a  visit  to  General  Cass,  reported  him  to  have  said: 
"  Office-seeking,  in  men,  women  and  children,  has  become 
our  national  malady.  God  only  knows  how  it  is  to  be 
checked,  or  in  what  direction  the  cure  lies."  This  unlucky 
speech  provoked  a  volley  of  gibes  and  sarcasms  from  the 
press,  by  which  its  author  was  regarded  very  much  in  the 
light  of  a  thief  bellowing  "  Stop  thief  !  "  in  a  crowd.  Hav 
ing  by  assiduous  effort  climbed  nearly  to  the  topmost  bough 
of  the  official  tree,  where  snugly  perched  he  could  swing 
to  and  fro,  and  regale  himself  at  leisure  on  its  golden  fruit, 
the  old  gentleman  suddenly  turned  up  his  eyes  in  horror 
at  the  mania  of  office-seeking,  and  began  thoughtfully  con 
sidering  the  means  of  abating  it.  Such  a  spectacle  re 
minds  one  of  the  distillers  in  the  olden  time,  who,  having 
filled  their  coffers  by  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  ardent 
spirits,  turned  round  in  their  old  age,  and  becoming  presi 
dents  of  temperance  societies,  denounced  in  fiery  periods 
the  traffickers  in  "  wet  damnation." 

Consistent  or  inconsistent  in  his  denunciations,  General 
Cass  did  not  exaggerate  in  declaring  office-seeking  to  be 
"  our  national  malady."  There  is  probably  no  other  coun- 

13*  305 


306  OFFICE-SEEKING. 

try  in  the  world  where  the  appetite  for  place  and  patron 
age  is  so  universal  and  so  craving.  In  view  of  the  fact  that 
the  very  best  office  for  any  man  is  that  which  he  can  make 
for  himself  by  energy,  industry,  tact  and  faith;  that  pri 
vate  life  offers  ten  times  more  inducements  to  an  upright, 
ambitious  man  than  any  place  within  the  people's  gift;  and 
above  all,  that  the  man  who  holds  office  for  a  few  years 
loses  all  taste  and  energy  for  the  ordinary  pursuits  of  life, 
—  it  is  marvelous  to  see  what  a  greed  for  the  loaves  and 
fishes  of  office  has  seized  upon  all  classes  of  the  American 
people.  Scarcely  is  a  new  president  elected  ere  he  is  sur 
rounded  by  a  sea  of  upturned  faces,  with  jaws  distended, 
ready  to  catch  the  smallest  morsel  that  may  be  thrown 
from  the  public  trough.  For  months  afterward  the  White 
House  and  the  doors  of  the  departments  are  besieged  by 
a  ravenous  crowd  of  applicants  begging  for  sops  from  the 
public  table.  Probably  Washington  was  never  before  so 
overrun  with  political  mendicants  as  during  the  first  few 
months  of  Grant's  administration.  All  the  hotels  were  full 
of  keen,  gray-eyed  men  who  longed  to  fill  for  four  years 
some  pet  place  under  the  government.  The  streets  were 
thronged  with  them;  the  steamers  and  the  railway  car 
riages,  the  public  departments,  the  steps  of  the  senators1 
dwellings,  the  lobbies  of  the  capital,  the  president's  man 
sion,  were  crowded  with  long-limbed,  nervous,  eager-eyed 
men,  who  had  hurried  on  the  wings  of  steam  to  Washing 
ton  to  concentrate  in  one  focus  on  the  mind  of  the  presi 
dent  all  the  myriad  influences  which,  by  letter,  testimonial, 
personal  application,  unceasing  "  canvass,"  and  sleepless 
solicitation  they  could  collect  together.  "  Every  Senator," 
says  a  Washington  correspondent,  writing  at  the  time, 
"  has  a  clientelle  more  numerous  than  had  the  most  popu- 


OFFICE-SEEKING.  307 

lar  young  Roman  noble  who  ever  sauntered  down  the  Via 
Sacra.  If  one  of  them  ventures  out  of  cover  the  cry  is 
raised,  and  he  is  immediately  run  to  earth.  The  printing 
presses  are  busy  with  endless  copies  of  testimonials,  which 
are  hurled  at  everybody  with  reckless  profusion."  The 
hungry  swarms  that  killed  Harrison  outright,  shortened 
the  days  of  Taylor,  and  gave  Lincoln  nearly  as  much 
trouble  as  the  rebellion  itself,  were  outnumbered  by  the 
hosts  of  patriots  who  besieged  and  beseeched  Grant  that 
they  might  serve  their  country,  and  draw  salaries  for  the 
same.  So  violent  at  times  has  been  the  pressure  in  the  de 
partments,  that  roundabouts,  it  is  said,  have  been  adopted 
as  the  uniform, —  the  officials  finding  skirts  a  serious  im 
pediment  to  locomotion,  as  the  cormorants  would  grab  at 
their  coat-tails  when  they  darted  from  door  to  door. 

As  at  Washington,  so  at  the  state  capitals,  and  wher 
ever  there  are  offices,  even  with  starvation  salaries,  to  fill. 
The  scramble  of  fifty  applicants  for  every  vacancy  in  the 
post-office  or  police  force  of  Chicago  is  no  anomaly,  but  a 
single  example  of  the  mania  that  rages  throughout  the 
country.  A  Massachusetts  newspaper  states  that  at  a  polit 
ical  convention,  held  a  few  years  ago  at  Worcester,  in 
that  state,  for  the  nomination  of  a  governor,  there  were 
numbers  of  respectable  men,  with  anxious  faces,  eager 
eyes,  and  busy  tongues,  engaged  in  electioneering  for  of 
fices.  The  second  place  on  the  ticket,  a  comparatively  in 
significant  position,  was  sought  for  by  a  sufficient  number 
of  able-bodied  and  able-minded  men  to  form  a  military 
company.  There  were  embryo  treasurers,  auditors,  and 
secretaries  enough,  aching  for  office  and  begging  aid  to 
get  it,  to  manage  the  finances  of  France;  while  three  or 
four  of  the  cleverest  fellows  in  the  commonwealth  crossed 


308  OFFICE-SEEKING. 

and  recrossed  one  another's  paths  in  the  halls  of  the  hotels 
and  the  lobbies  of  the  convention  hundreds  of  times,  in 
eager,  personal  striving  against  one  another  for  the  office 
of  attorney-general,  and  succeeded  in  dividing  the  conven 
tion  so  that  no  one  obtained  a  majority  of  votes. 

It  was  not  always  thus  that  office  was  regarded  by  the 
people  of  this  country.  Within  this  century,  and  even 
within  the  last  fifty  years,  a  revolution  has  taken  place 
in  the  public  sentiment  on  the  subject.  In  the  ante-revo 
lution  times,  office-holding  was  regarded  like  serving  on 
the  jury,  as  a  burden,  to  be  avoided  rather  than  coveted. 
So  deep  and  general  was  the  feeling,  that  it  became  neces 
sary  to  enforce  the  acceptance  of  office  by  legal  penalties. 
The  private  citizen  who  shunned  notoriety,  or  deemed  his 
time  too  precious  to  permit  him  to  serve  his  country,  was 
obliged  to  purchase  his  exemption  by  a  fine.  In  1632  the 
General  Court  of  Plymouth  passed  an  act  that  "  whoever 
should  refuse  the  office  of  governor  should  pay  £20  ster-  • 
ling,  unless  he  should  be  chosen  two  years  successively, 
and  whoever  should  refuse  the  office  of  councillor  or  mag 
istrate  should  pay  £10."  When  afterward  the  people  had 
become  richer,  and  with  wealth  had  acquired  leisure,  they 
were  more  willing  to  accept  office,  but  they  never  thought 
of  nominating  themselves,  much  less  of  making  stump- 
speeches,  going  about  to  beg  for  votes,  packing  conventions 
with  their  friends,  or  resorting  to  any  of  the  other  de 
grading  arts  that  are  now  employed  by  the  successful 
politician.  Many  of  the  great  men  who  then  took  office, 
did  so  with  reluctance  —  electioneering,  if  they  did  so,  to 
prevent  their  nomination  —  declining  a  reelection;  and  if 
they  served  a  second  term,  it  was  because  the  people,  know 
ing  their  fitness,  dragged  them  from  the  quiet  and  seclu- 


OFFICE-SEEKING.  309 

sion  of  the  homes  they  loved  so  well,  and  forced  them  into 
chairs  of  state.  Had  these  men  coveted  and  struggled  for 
place  like  the  politicians  of  to-day,  they  would  have  shocked 
the  public,  killed  their  own  influence,  and  history  would 
have  made  no  mention,  or  only  a  scornful  mention,  of 
their  names.  From  the  infancy  of  the  nation  down  to 
the  year  1829,  ninety-five,  at  least,  out  of  every  hundred 
voters,  lived  and  died  without  a  thought  of  gaining  their 
livelihood  at  the  public  charge. 

Now  all  is  changed.  The  mania  for  office  has  been 
raging  more  and  more  fiercely  during  the  last  fifty  years, 
till  now  it  attacks  all  classes  of  society.  We  say  mania, 
for  such  it  really  is, —  an  epidemic,  a  disease  of  the  body 
politic,  which  must  have  its  run,  and  will  then  disappear. 
The  motives  which  prompt  the  general  scramble  for  place, 
are  usually  a  desire  for  the  pickings  and  stealings  which 
are  supposed  to  be  incident  to  it,  and  a  disposition  to 
shirk  honest  work.  "Do  you  want  a  clerk?"  said  an 
aspirant  for  a  "  situation  "  to  a  vender  of  mutton  pies. 
"Why  do  you  want  to  tend  my  stand?"  asked  the  latter. 
"  Because,"  was  the  frank  reply,  "  Pm  awfully  hungry" 
The  great  mass  of  place-hunters,  if  equally  honest,  would 
make  a  similar  avowal.  Considering,  however,  how  paltry 
is  the  remuneration  of  most  office-holders,  compared  with 
the  sums  one  may  earn  in  a  good  business,  we  cannot  but 
be  surprised  at  the  general  eagerness  for  office.  That  fat 
places, —  yielding  a  rich  harvest  of  greenbacks, —  the  few 
brilliant  prizes  to  a  thousand  blanks, —  should  be  greedily 
coveted,  and  the  machinery  of  log-rolling  set  in  motion  to 
obtain  them,  is  not  surprising;  but,  as  there  is  no  coun 
try  on  the  globe  where  office  confers  so  little  distinction 
as  here,  so  there  is  none  where,  all  things  considered,  it 


310  OFFICE-SEEKING. 

yields  so  wretched  a  remuneration.  The  number  of  offices 
in  the  gift  of  the  American  people,  which,  if  honestly  ad 
ministered,  will  yield  to  the  order  of  talent  required  to 
fill  them  as  much  income  as  a  legitimate  private  busi 
ness,  is  exceedingly  small.  Then,  again,  the  precarious 
tenure  by  which  offices  are  held  in  this  country  affords 
another  reason  to  show  that  they  are  not  worth  the  sacri 
fice  of  time  and  trouble  necessary  to  obtain  them.  A 
party  which  is  victorious  at  one  election  may  be  van 
quished  at  the  next,  and  then  ensues  an  entire  change  of 
policy,  in  which  those  who  but  lately  abandoned  their 
regular  business  for  the  emoluments  of  office  are  hurled 
from  their  places  as  abruptly  as  their  predecessors,  when 
they  have  but  just  learned  how  properly  to  discharge  their 
duties.  Few  persons  are  ever  known  to  get  rich  by  office, 
while  thousands  who  before  were  slowly  but  steadily  ac 
cumulating  an  independence  for  themselves  and  families, 
have,  by  holding  an  office  for  a  few  years,  acquired  a  dis 
taste  and  unfitness  for  the  pursuits  of  ordinary  industry, 
and  been  finally  reduced  to  poverty  and  ruin. 

One  of  the  wisest  things  done  by  Daniel  Webster  in  his 
youth,  was  to  refuse  the  office  of  clerk  of  a  New  Hamp 
shire  court,  which  his  father,  after  much  effort,  had  obtained 
for  him,  and  which  yielded  a  salary  of  fifteen  hundred  dol 
lars  a  year,  a  sum  which  was  then  probably  equal  to  five 
thousand  dollars  to-day,  and  which  to  a  poor  struggling 
attorney  must  have  been  very  tempting.  If  ever  a  young 
man  of  ability  had  a  good  excuse  for  abandoning  his  chosen 
calling,  and  "shelving"  himself  in  a  snug  office,  Daniel 
Webster  would  have  been  excusable  for  doing  so,  in  view 
of  his  own  and  his  father's  poverty.  "I  had  felt,"  he  says, 
"  the  res  angustce  domi  till  my  very  bones  ached."  With 


OFFICE-SEEKING.  311 

many  pangs,  yet  resolutely,  lie  followed  the  advice  of  Mr. 
Gore  (with  whom  he  had  been  reading  law),  which  shut 
him  out  from  this  opening  paradise,  and  which  was  so 
pithy  and  sensible  that  it  deserves  to  be  pondered  by  all 
young  men  who  are  similarly  situated:  "Go  and  finish 
your  studies;  you  are  poor  enough,  but  there  are  greater 
evils  than  poverty.  Live  on  no  man's  favor;  what  bread 
you  do  eat,  let  it  be  the  bread  of  independence  ;  pursue 
your  profession,  make  yourself  useful  to  your  friends,  and 
a  little  formidable  to  your  enemies,  and  you  have  noth 
ing  to  fear."  The  acceptance  of  this  advice  was  the  more 
difficult  because  Mr.  Webster  had  to  reconcile  his  father 
to  this  decision.  "  I  knew,11  he  says,  "  that  it  would  strike 
him  like  a  thunderbolt.  He  had  long  had  this  office  in 
view  for  me.  Its  income  would  make  him,  and  make  us 
all,  easy  and  comfortable;  his  health  was  bad,  and  grow 
ing  worse.11  Yet  young  Webster  mustered  resolution,  told 
his  father,  and,  fortunately  for  himself  and  for  his  country, 
obtained  his  acquiescence.  Had  he  gratified  his  father 
by  accepting  the  appointment,  it  is  doubtful,  considering 
his  phlegmatic  temperament,  whether,  instead  of  becoming 
the  great  constitutional  lawyer  of  the  country,  he  would 
not  have  remained  a  clerk  to  the  end  of  his  days.  So  with 
Vanderbilt,  Stewart,  and  other  great  merchants  and  rail 
road  kings.  Can  any  one  doubt  that  they  would  have 
been  doomed  to  poverty  and  insignificance,  had  they  been 
appointed  when  young  to  petty  offices,  and  held  them  until 
the  red  tape  and  drudgery  had  destroyed  their  elasticity, 
and  unfitted  them  for  great  enterprises  and  affairs? 

The  truth  is,  not  one  office  in  a  hundred  is  worth  striv 
ing  for  by  a  man  of  ability,  considering  the  enormous  labor 
the  pursuit  exacts,  the  annoyance  and  chagrin  he  has  to 


312  OFFICE-SEEKING. 

submit  to,  the  loss  of  self-respect  which  victory  and  de 
feat  alike  entail,  and  the  time  and  money  he  has  to  spend 
to  qualify  him  to  talk  of  his  "  claims  on  the  party."  We 
say  annoyances,  for  considering  the  liability  to  criticism, 
the  envyr  fault-findings,  and  perpetual  watchfulness  and 
struggles  to  keep  one's  place  which  it  involves,  an  office 
is  anything  but  a  bed  of  roses.  Life  under  a  burning- 
glass,  or  a  microscope,  is  not  the  pleasantest  of  lives,  and, 
with  the  growth  of  the  press  in  power,  ability,  and  watch 
fulness,  every  public  man,  even  the  most  insignificant,  be 
gins  to  live  with  the  light  concentrated  upon  his  face,  till 
half  his  strength  is  exhausted  in  keeping  his  eyes  from 
the  glare.  But  when  we  add  to  all  this  the  expense  of  a 
pilgrimage  to  the  office-seeker's  Mecca,  and  the  ennui  of 
hanging  about  the  hotels  and  loafing  about  the  streets 
for  weeks,  whilst  one's  business  is  going  to  ruin  at  home, 
all  of  which  may  end  in, — "My  dear  Mr.  Greenhorn,  I 
feel  the  full  force  of  your  claims;  your  certificates  are  of 
the  very  highest  character,  but,  though  you  have  been  the 
Ajax  of  the  party  in  your  district,  yet  it  is  impossible  to 
deny  Mr.  Artful  Dodger;  you  must  really  wait  till  there 
is  some  other  vacancy;  good  morning,  sir," — the  univer 
sality  of  scramble  for  place  seems  unaccountable. 

There  is  no  other  pursuit,  certainly  no  legitimate  one, 
which  is  so  full  of  humiliations,  disappointments  and  vex 
ations;  nor  is  there  any  in  which  failure  so  sours  the 
temper,  and  writes  such  sad  wrinkles  on  the  forehead. 
De  Maistre  has  well  characterized  the  capriciousness  with 
which  political  honors  are  bestowed,  by  telling  of  a  French 

courtier  who  wrote  to  a  friend  that  Monsieur  had 

just  been  appointed   to  a  certain  important  office,  "not 
withstanding   he   had   every   qualification    in   the  world." 


OFFICE-SEEKING.  313 

The  miseries  of  court  dependence,  as  described  by  Spenser, 
do  not  surpass  those  experienced  by  the  office-hunter  in  our 
own  country: 

"Full  little  knowest  thou  who  hast  not  tried, 
What  hell  it  is  in  suing  long  to  bide; 
To  lose  good  days  that  might  be  better  spent; 
To  waste  long  nights  in  pensive  discontent; 
To  speed  to-day,  to  be  put  back  to-morrow; 
To  feed  on  hope,  to  pine  with  fear  and  sorrow; 
To  have  thy  princess's  grace,  yet  want  her  peers'; 
To  have  thy  asking,  yet  wait  many  years; 
To  fret  thy  soul  with  crosses  and  with  cares 
To  eat  thy  heart  in  comfortless  despairs; 
To  fawn,  to  crouch,  to  wait,  to  ride,  to  run; 
To  spend,  to  give,  to  wait, — to  be  undone." 

Nearly  all  the  celebrated  men  who  have  tried  public 
life  have  borne  similar  testimony.  The  Duke  of  Shrews 
bury,  who  was  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  of  the  great 
Whig  nobles  that  invited  William  of  Holland  to  England, 
abandoned  politics  in  disgust,  and  retired  to  Italy.  "I 
wonder,"  he  wrote  with  great  bitterness  to  Somers  in  1700, 
"how  any  man  who  has  bread  in  England,  will  be  con 
cerned  in  business  of  State.  Had  I  a  son,  I  would  sooner 
bind  him  a  cobbler  than  a  courtier,  and  a  hangman  than  a 
statesman."  "  How  I  long,"  wrote  Lord  Cornwallis,  when 
Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  "  to  kick  those  whom  it  is  my 
duty  obliges  me  to  court!"  Daniel  Webster,  at  the  end  of 
his  life,  confessed  to  his  friend  Harvey  that  his  political 
life  had  been  full  of  disappointment.  "  If  I  were  to  live 
my  life  over  again,"  said  he,  "  with  my  present  experiences, 
I  would,  under  no  considerations,  allow  myself  to  enter 
public  life.  The  public  are  ungrateful.  The  man  who 
serves  the  public  most  faithfully  receives  no  adequate 
14 


314  OFFICE-SEEKING. 

reward.  In  my  own  history,  those  acts  which  have  been, 
before  God,  most  disinterested  and  the  least  stained  by 
selfish  considerations,  have  been  precisely  those  for  which 
I  have  been  most  freely  abused.  No,  no!  have  nothing  to 
do  with  politics.  Sell  your  iron;  eat  the  bread  of  inde 
pendence;  support  your  family  with  the  rewards  of  honest 
toil;  do  your  duty  as  a  private  citizen  to  your  country, — 
but  let  politics  alone.  It  is  a  hard  life,  a  thankless  life. 
*  *  *  I  have  had,  in  the  course  of  my  official  life, — 
which  is  not  a  short  one, —  my  full  share  of  ingratitude; 
but  the  unkindest  cut  of  all,  the  shaft  that  has  sunk 
deepest  in  my  heart,  has  been  the  refusal  of  this  Adminis 
tration  to  grant  my  request  for  an  office  of  small  pecuniary 
consideration  for  my  only  son.'' 

Office  is  sometimes  sought  for  the  vulgar  notoriety  it 
brings;  but  oftener  for  the  power  and  influence  it  gives; 
but  the  chief  power  it  gives  at  the  present  day  is  that  of 
making  enemies.  Every  man  who  is  elected  to  a  desirable 
place  is  expected  to  reward  the  partisans  to  whom  he 
chiefly  owes  his  election;  and,  whatever  he  may  do,  he  is 
sure  to  offend  ten  to  every  one  he  pleases.  The  honor 
which  office  confers  is,  in  the  generality  of  cases,  purely 
imaginary.  No  man  is  honored  by  a  public  station,  unless 
he  honors  it;  in  the  very  degree  in  which  it  adds  to  his 
dignity  or  respectability,  he  shows  himself  to  be  unfit  for 
it.  "A  fool  in  high  station,"  it  has  been  well  said,  "is 
like  a  man  on  the  top  of  a  mountain;  everybody  appears 
small  to  him,  and  he  appears  small  to  everybody." 

Some  years  ago  a  gentleman  who  had  spent  all  his  best 
years  as  a  political  manager,  said  just  before  his  death  to 
the  editor  of  the  New  York  "Liberal  Christian,"  that 
though  his  political  life  was  generally  regarded  as  a  success, 


OFFICE-SEEKING.  315 

he  himself  looked  upon  it  as  a  failure.  By  close  appli 
cation  and  great  exertions  and  sacrifices  he  had  carried 
measure  after  measure,  secured  the  nomination  or  election 
of  this  man  or  that,  gained  point  after  point,  even  when 
other  men  had  given  them  up  as  lost,  seen  his  man  in  the 
Senate  and  the  House  and  the  Governor's  chair,  and  had 
his  bill  written  on  the  statute  book  times  without  number. 
But,  after  all,  the  work  had  not  paid.  The  men  he  had 
worked  so  hard  to  elect  generally  disappointed  his  expecta 
tion.  The  reputation  he  had  gained  by  this  sort  of  activity 
prevented  his  elevation  to  the  highest  offices,  and  the 
suspicion  of  dishonesty  shut  him  out  from  all  lucrative 
ones.  After  twenty-five  years  of  work,  hard  enough  to 
have  made  his  fame  as  lawyer,  minister,  reformer  or  au 
thor,  or  to  have  gained  a  fortune  in  mercantile  life,  he  was 
left  behind,  like  a  worn-out  mule  by  an  advancing  army, 
without  name,  learning  or  influence,  and  with  barely  a 
competence  for  his  old  age.  He  had  managed  the  stage 
for  other  men  to  act  other  men's  ideas  upon;  and  while  he 
had  done  the  work,  they  had  secured  the  applause  and  the 
pay.  "I  am  haunted  now  by  the  memory  of  a  wasted  life." 
"  Here,"  says  the  editor  in  conclusion,  "  was  a  lesson  well 
worth  the  pondering.  This  man,  of  more  than  ordinary 
abilities,  who  had  held  all  sorts  of  offices  up  to  representa 
tive  in  Congress,  and  had  been  looked  up  to  as  one  of  the 
magnates  of  his  party,  summed  up  the  whole  account  at 
the  end  of  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  a  long-drawn  sigh. 
That  sigh  was  more  impressive,  more  eloquent  than  any 
sermon  we  ever  heard.  It  was  a  sermon,  preached  from 
a  pulpit  built  of  years  of  such  work  as  is  put  into  no  oaken 
or  rosewood  structure  by  a  joiner's  or  carver's  hand,  in 


316  OFFICE-SEEKING. 

tones  we  shall  never  forget.  Twenty-five  years  were  con 
densed  into  that  breath." 

Macaulay,  in  a  letter  to  his  friend  Ellis,  expresses  his 
astonishment  that  any  man  who  might  hope  to  be  success 
ful  in  literature  or  politics  should  choose  the  latter  and 
quit  the  former.  "  On  the  one  side,"  he  declares,  "  are 
health,  leisure,  peace  of  mind,  the  search  after  truth,  and 
all  the  enjoyments  of  friendship  and  conversation.  On  the 
other  side 'are  almost  certain  ruin  to  the  constitution,  con 
stant  labor,  constant  anxiety.  Every  friendship  which  a 
man  may  have  becomes  precarious  as  soon  as  he  engages 
in  politics."  In  a  similar  vein  Landor,  in  his  "  Imaginary 
Conversations,"  strikingly  illustrates  the  miseries  of  those 
who  forsake  the  peaceful  paths  of  literature  for  the  jang 
ling  pursuits  of  politics.  "  How  many,"  says  Sir  Philip 
Sidney,  one  of  the  imaginary  interlocutors,  "  who  have 
abandoned  for  public  life  the  studies  of  philosophy  and 
poetry,  may  be  compared  to  brooks  and  rivers  which  in  the 
beginning  of  their  course  have  assuaged  our  thirst,  and 
have  invited  us  to  tranquillity  by  their  bright  resemblance 
of  it,  and  which  afterward  partake  of  the  nature  of  that  vast 
body  into  which  they  run,  its  dreariness,  its  bitterness,  its 
foams,  its  storms,  its  everlasting  noise  and  commotion!  I 
have  known  several  such,  and  when  I  have  innocently 
smiled  at  them,  their  countenances  seemed  to  say:  'I  wish 
I  could  despise  you;  but  alas!  I  am  a  runaway  slave,  and 
from  the  best  of  mistresses  to  the  worst  of  masters;  I 
serve  at  a  tavern  where  every  hour  is  dinner-time,  and 
pick  a  bone  upon  a  silver  dish.' " 

We  have  already  alluded  to  the  fact  that  persons  who 
hold  office  for  some  years  acquire  a  distaste  for  the  ordi 
nary  pursuits  of  life.  It  is,  indeed,  one  of  the  misfor- 


OFFICE-SEEKING.  317 

tunes  of  place  and  power,  that  those  who  have  tasted  them 
can  be  happy  neither  with  them  nor  without  them ;  they  are 
uneasy  upon  their  eminence,  and  yet  feel  it  a  mortification 
to  come  down  from  it,  tenaciously  clinging  to  its  emolu 
ments,  while  they  are  made  wretched  by  its  vexations  and 
disappointments.  In  1841,  in  his  seventy-fourth  year, 
John  Quincy  Adams,  who  had  received  almost  every  polit 
ical  honor  within  the  gift  of  the  people,  received  a  letter 
from  a  stranger  advising  him  to  retire  from  public  life. 
"  The  only  reason,"  he  records  in  his  diary,  "  for  my  post 
poning  this  is,  that  I  cannot  afford  it.  There  is  another 
which  I  should  have  much  trouble  to  overcome,  but  which 
I  would  encounter;  that  is,  the  vacuity  of  occupation  in 
which  I  could  take  an  interest.  More  than  sixty  years  of 
incessant  active  intercourse  with  the  world  has  made  polit 
ical  movement  to  me  as  much  a  necessary  of  life  as  atmos 
pheric  air.  This  is  the  weakness  of  my  nature,  which  I 
have  intellect  enough  left  to  perceive,  but  not  energy  to 
control.  And  thus,  while  a  remnant  of  physical  power  is 
left  to  me  to  write  and  speak,  the  world  will  retire  from 
me  before  I  shall  retire  from  the  world." 

Let  every  young  man  then  who  would  succeed  in  life 
resolve  that,  whatever  may  be  his  calling,  however  hard 
his  early  struggles,  he  will  not  be  an  office-seeker.  Of  the 
thousands  who  engage  in  this  pursuit,  the  vast  majority 
must  necessarily  be  unsuccessful;  to  every  prize  in  the  lot 
tery  there  are  a  hundred  blanks.  The  increasing  greed 
for  place,  the  readiness  with  which  men  sacrifice  money, 
health,  integrity  and  reputation  to  obtain  it,  is  one  of  the 
saddest  signs  of  the  times.  In  view  of  the  sacrifice  of 
personal  independence  involved  in  office-holding,  and  of 
the  extent  to  which  public  places  have  been  cheapened 


318  OFFICE-SEEKING. 

and  degraded  till  they  have  become,  as  Nicholas  Biddle 
once  said,  "  like  the  tops  of  the  Pyramids,  which  reptiles 
may  reach  as  well  as  eagles,"  we  do  not  wonder  that  some 
of  our  best  men  are  beginning  to  decline  the  acceptance 
of  official  appointments  which  others  eagerly  covet.  One 
of  the  ablest  lawyers  in  New  England  has  again  and  again 
refused  pressing  invitations  to  accept  a  nomination  for 
Congress,  and  to  a  seat  on  the  bench  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  his  State,  declaring  that  he  will  never  consent 
to  occupy  any  public  place  while  he  has  "  wit  enough  to 
keep  out  of  the  poor-house."  We  cannot  expect  giants 
to  stoop  to  offices  that  have  been  degraded  by  pigmies. 
They  will  continue,  and  in  greater  numbers,  to  refuse 
them,  till  places  of  honor  and  trust  cease  to  be  regarded 
as  the  mere  spoils  of  political  victors,  and  to  be  regarded 
as  desirable  chiefly  for  the  pickings  and  stealings  incident 
thereto,  or  that  one  may  shirk  honest  work,  or  for  the 
vulgar  notoriety  they  will  give,  or  for  the  power  they  will 
lend  him  to  advance  his  own  selfish  ends. 

In  conclusion,  we  commend  to  the  attention  of  every 
young  man  who  meditates  engaging  in  the  scramble  for 
office  the  advice  which  Thomas  Corwin,  of  Ohio,  is  said 
to  have  given  some  years  ago,  when  Secretary  at  Wash 
ington,  to  one  who  importuned  him  for  a  clerkship.  Tell 
ing  him  to  go  West,  squat,  build  a  cabin,  and  live  like 
a  freeman,  he  said,  "  Accept  a  clerkship  here,  and  you 
sink  at  once  all  independence;  your  energy  becomes  re 
laxed,  and  you  are  unfitted  in  a  few  years  for  any  other 
and  more  independent  position.  I  may  give  you  a  place 
to-day,  and  I  can  kick  you  out  again  to-morrow;  and 
there's  another  man  over  at  the  White  House  who  can 
kick  me  out;  and  the  people,  by-and-by,  can  kick  him  out. 


OFFICE-SEEKING.  319 

and  so  we  go.  But  if  you  own  an  acre  of  land  it  is  your 
kingdom,  and  your  cabin  is  your  castle;  you  are  a  sov 
ereign,  and  you  will  feel  it  in  every  throbbing  of  your 
pulse,  and  every  day  of  your  life  will  assure  me  of  your 
thanks  for  having  thus  advised  you." 


AMERICANISMS. 


There  is  a  purism  which,  while  it  seeks  to  maintain  the  in 
tegrity  of  language,  in  effect  stifles  its  growth.— W.  D.  WHITNEY. 

TTTHEN  a  colony  is  established  in  a  distant  land,  its 
*  *  language  begins  at  once  to  diverge  from  that  of 
the  mother  country  in  various  ways.  Not  only  do  certain 
words  cease  to  be  used  by  the  one  people,  and  certain  other 
words  by  the  other,  but  the  same  word  is  applied  differ 
ently  by  the  two  peoples  ;  words  are  compounded  differ 
ently  by  them ;  and  the  pronunciation  and  orthography  of 
words  will  vary,  especially  through  the  use  of  convertible 
consonants.  We  have  a  striking  illustration  of  this  in 
the  ancient  Scandinavian  language,  or  Old  Norse,  which 
a  thousand  years  ago  was  the  common  speech  of  Iceland, 
Denmark,  Sweden,  and  Norway,  but  now  exists  entire  in 
no  one  of  those  countries.  When  in  1825  the  Duke  of 
Saxe  Weimar  traveled  in  the  United  States,  and  visited  a 
colony  of  Germans  in  Pennsylvania  who  had  been  settled 
there  only  a  quarter  of  a  century,  he  was  surprised  to  find 
that,  owing  to  the  European  wars,  which  had  cut  off  all 
intercourse  with  the  Fatherland,  the  people  were  speaking 
a  dialect  which  at  home  had  become  obsolete.  So  when 
our  forefathers  left  England,  and  began  to  form  a  new 
nation  three  thousand  miles  away  from  the  mother  country, 
it  was  inevitable  that  the  differences  of  climate,  natural 
productions,  and  national  customs,  should  insensibly  lead, 

320 


AMERICANISMS.  321 

in  the  course  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  years,  to  some 
striking  differences  in  the  speech  of  the  two  countries. 
These  differences,  however,  thanks  to  our  close  connection 
with  the  mother  country,  the  community  of  culture  we 
have  kept  up  with  her,  and  our  admission  of  her  superior 
authority  in  matters  of  learning  and  literature,  have  been 
far  fewer  and  less  glaring  than  might  reasonably  have 
been  feared.  Though  sundered  from  our  British  cousins  by 
a  vast  ocean,  we  have  been,  and  still  are,  bound  with  them 
by  invisible  ties  into  one  community.  The  divergence  of 
what  Sydney  Smith  calls  "the  American  language"  from 
the  English  is  not  a  tithe  so  great  as  the  differences  in 
the  dialects  of  England.  Still  British  purism,  not  to  say 
hypercriticism,  finds  fault  with  even  our  higher  styles  of 
discourse,  as  disfigured  by  "Americanisms,"  and  in  both 
the  tone  and  material  of  colloquial  talk  the  discrepancies 
are,  of  course,  much  more  marked.  Retaining  not  a  few 
older  words,  phrases,  and  meanings  which  their  use  rejects, 
we  have  failed  at  the  same  time  to  adopt  certain  others 
which  have  sprung  up  in  England  since  the  separation, 
and  have  coined  yet  others  of  which  they  have  not  ap 
proved.  "  Upon  all  these  points,"  as  an  able  American 
philologist  remarks,  "  we  are,  in  the  abstract,  precisely  as 
much  in  the  right  as  they;  but  the  practical  question  is, 
which  of  the  two  is  the  higher  authority,  whose  approved 
usage  shall  be  the  norm  of  correct  English  speaking." 

It  is  said  that  when  Melville,  Queen  Elizabeth's  am 
bassador,  told  her  that  the  Queen  of  Scots  was  an  inch 
taller  than  her  majesty,  she  replied,  "  Then  she  is  an  inch 
too  tall";  and  in  much  the  same  spirit  British  purists 
have  assumed  their  own  customs  and  usages,  linguistic  or 
otherwise,  to  be  the  sole  absolute  standard  of  taste  ancj 


322  AMERICANISMS. 

propriety.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  our  mother 
tongue  came  from  nowhere  in  particular,  but  may  be 
said  to  have  been  "  at  a  feast  of  languages,  and  stolen 
the  scraps,"  and  though,  never  for  a  moment  fixed  or 
stationary,  it  still  continues  to  beg,  borrow,  steal  and  as 
similate  words  wherever  it  can  find  them,  provided  only 
they  express  new  ideas,  or  render  an  old  one  more  tersely 
than  before,  yet  every  new  term  coined  on  this  side  of 
the  Atlantic  has  been  branded  and  pilloried,  whether  it 
originated  in  circumstances  out  of  the  reach  of  English 
experience,  and  met  a  clamorous  necessity  of  our  situation, 
or  not.  Too  often  the  growls  of  the  British  lion  have 
been  echoed  by  his  American  imitators,  who  have  not 
taken  the  trouble  even  to  ask  themselves,  "  What  is  an 
Americanism?"  and  thus  get  a  clear  meaning  of  the  term. 
Before  joining  in  the  hue-and-cry  against  any  words  thus 
stigmatized,  would  it  not  be  well  to  pause  and  ask  what 
is  meant  by  the  epithet?  Is  it  any  chance  misuse  of  Eng 
lish  of  which  an  American  writer  may  be  guilty,  or  the 
vulgarism  of  any  clique  or  locality?  Is  it  just  to  term 
all  the  anomalies  and  provincialisms  which  can  be  raked 
and  scraped  together  from  the  slang  of  the  backwoods  and 
the  bar-rooms,  the  dialects  of  the  Mississippi  boatmen,  the 
southern  sand-hillers,  the  Bowery  boys,  Yankee  peddlers, 
the  frequenters  of  pot-houses,  as  well  as  from  the  rubbish 
and  scum  of  our  raw-head-and-bloody-bones  literature  of 
the  Cobb  and  Ingraham  school,  and,  cramming  them  into 
a  thick  volume,  label  them  "Americanisms?"  As  justly 
might  we  collect  all  the  slang  of  London  thieves,  the  "  ex 
asperated  haitches  "  of  the  cockneys,  the  provincialisms  of 
Yorkshire,  the  Northumberland  "  burrs,"  the  patois  of 
Cornwall,  the  uncouth  verbal  anomalies  of  the  miners,  and 


AMERICANISMS.  323 

mingling  with  them  the  comic  compounds  of  Sydney  Smith, 
and  the  monstrosities  of  Carlyle  and  his  imitators,  label 
the  whole  as  the  common  speech  of  England. 

It  is  absurd  to  pronounce  every  word  that  chances  first 
to  see  the  light  in  this  country  an  Americanism,  No  term 
can  justly  be  so  called  until  it  has  received  the  sanction  of 
general  and  respectable  usage.  Till  recently  we  have  been 
willing  to  bow  to  English  authority  upon  all  questions 
touching  English  speech;  but,  as  it  has  been  well  said, 
America  is  now  out  of  her  leading-strings,  and  the  nation 
which  has  supplied  the  world  with  two  of  the  best  diction 
aries  of  our  tongue,  may  certainly  trust  its  own  judgment 
and  instincts  in  inventing  the  new  words  it  needs.  We 
deny  the  exclusive  right  of  John  Bull  to  coin  new  expres 
sions,  or  that  it  is  a  statutory  offense  to  invent  on  this  side 
of  the  Atlantic  a  felicitous,  or  daring,  or  useful,  expression 
unauthorized  by  Todd  or  Johnson.  Our  language  is  no 
longer  the  language  of  England  merely;  and  while  she 
merits  our  profoundest  homage  as  the  land  which  nursed 
our  tongue  in  its  infancy,  and  whose  scholars  have  done  the 
most  to  enrich,  refine  and  beautify  it,  we  yet  hold  that  any 
genuine  improvement  of  it, —  any  legitimate  addition  to  its 
wealth  of  words, —  should  be  welcomed  from  any  quarter 
of  the  globe  where  it  is  spoken.  The  peculiar  circum 
stances  in  which  the  inhabitants  of  the  United  States  are 
placed,  the  objects  of  nature,  the  productions  of  the  earth, 
the  employments,  the  modes  of  thought,  the  characteristic 
tastes  and  sensibilities,  necessitate  a  corresponding  diversity 
of  language,  not  only  between  this  and  the  mother  country, 
but  even  between  different  parts  of  our  own  vast  country. 
Hence,  such  words  as  backtvoodsman,  congressional,  prairie, 
immigrants,  improvements,  and  many  others,  meeting  real 


324  AMERICANISMS. 

exigencies  of  our  situation,  and  describing  tilings  which  do 
not  exist  in  England,  are  entitled  to  rank,  not  as  American 
isms,  but  as  genuine  English;  for  the  English  would  have 
coined  them  had  they  been  in  our  places. 

We  have  no  objection,  however,  to  the  term  "American 
ism/1  provided  it  be  not  deemed  equivalent,  as  it  certainly 
is  not,  to  vulgarism.  It  is  natural  enough  that  lexicog 
raphers  and  schoolmasters  should  deprecate  innovations; 
but  they  should  not  forget  that  language,  like  everything 
else  that  is  living,  is  progressive.  It  is  an  incessant  act 
of  creation,  ever  advancing,  ever  developing.  New  cir 
cumstances  of  life,  new  discoveries  of  thought,  new  con 
quests  of  art  and  science,  exact  new  forms  of  expression. 
The  influences  of  climate  and  history  are  continually  pro 
ducing  fresh  revolutions  in  the  character  of  a  nation,  and 
the  change  of  character  necessitates  modifications  of  the 
prevalent  idiom.  The  very  words  we  use  to-day  will  sound 
strange  to  a  future  generation;  even  our  great-grand 
children  will  detect  something  quaint  and  unfamiliar  in 
our  speech,  many  of  the  terms  of  which  will  have  become 
pedantic,  vulgar,  or  obsolete.  Who  uses  "sweetheart" 
to-day,  and  yet  what  term  of  endearment  have  we  to 
supply  its  place?  "Commence"  is  fast  displacing  "begin," 
and  "plain,"  "lewd,"  "odd,"  "crafty,"  have  very  different 
meanings  from  those  they  had  a  hundred  years  ago.  Woe 
to  that  nation  whose  language  has  become  fixed  and  un 
changing  !  Fixity  of  language  argues  stagnation  of  thought; 
a  lack  of  energy,  stir,  and  new  ideas;  and,  conversely,  the 
growth  of  a  nation's  vocabulary  may  be  regarded  as  almost 
the  exact  measure  of  the  activity  and  advancement  of  a 
people, —  of  the  development  of  its  general  intelligence. 
The  Americanisms  we  have  coined, —  the  odd-looking  words 


AMERICANISMS.  325 

and  phrases  by  which  we  designate  novel  thoughts  and 
novel  things, —  are  proofs  of  our  mental  activity.  They 
mark  our  arrival  at  the  stature  of  manhood,  and  our 
intellectual  emancipation  from  the  shackles  of  the  old 
country.  The  health  and  vigor  of  a  tree  are  shown  by  the 
vigor  with  which  it  sends  off  new  shoots  and  increases  its 
foliage.  When  it  ceases  to  do  this,  decay  has  set  in;  the 
sap  no  longer  flows  vigorously,  and  its  branches  begin  to 
wither. 

Already  not  a  few  of  our  verbal  inventions  have  com 
mended  themselves  to  the  good  sense  of  the  English  people. 
Many  of  them  by  steam  presses  and  steamships  have  been 
smuggled  into  the  British  islands  and  their  colonies,  and, 
to  the  great  horror  of  purists,  and  in  spite  of  their  pro 
tests,  have  been  indissoluby  incorporated  with  the  mother- 
speech.  Philologists  have  denounced  them;  but  a  legion 
of  academicians  could  not  keep  them  out.  By  a  law  as 
sure  in  its  operation  as  the  laws  of  physical  motion  or 
chemical  attraction,  the  popular  coinages  of  one  age  become 
the  classic  phraseology  of  the  next.  "Mob,"  "sham," 
"advocate,"  "bully,"  "banter,"  "bubble,"  were  all  outlaws 
once;  but  they  were  long  ago  received  into  the  body  of 
good  citizens.  "  Skate  "  was  a  new  word  in  Swift's  day,  and 
so  was  "fanatics"  in  Fuller's.  A  writer  in  the  "World" 
tells  us  that  he  assisted  at  the  birth  of  that  most  significant 
word  "  flirtation,"  which  "  dropped  from  the  most  beautiful 
mouth  in  the  world,  and  which  has  since  received  the  sanc 
tion  of  our  most  accurate  Laureate  in  one  of  his  comedies." 
Dean  Swift  objected  to  "hoax,"  as  vulgar,  and  "humbug" 
was  denounced  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  as 
"the  uncouth  dialect  of  the  Huns,  the  jabber  of  Hotten 
tots";  but  which  of  the  synonyms  of  these  words  could 


326  AMERICANISMS. 

supply  their  place?  No  one  now  objects  to  "suicide,"  which 
is  certainly  pithier  than  "  self  homicide";  yet  Phillips,  a 
nephew  of  Milton,  denounced  it  as  a  word  that  should  be 
"  hissed  off,"  because  it  was  quite  as  suggestive  of  sus,  a 
sow,  as  of  the  pronoun  sui.  Chaucer  imported  so  many 
"  wagonfuls  "  of  French  words  into  our  language,  that  he 
was  nicknamed  "  The  French  Brewer."  The  truth  is,  how 
ever,  that  he  did  hardly  more  than  crystallize  in  literature 
verbal  forms  already  in  solution  among  the  floating  word- 
material  of  the  day.  Robert  Mannyng  and  Richard  Rolle, 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  protested  vehemently  against 
the  "  strange  Ynglyss,"  that  is  the  neologisms  of  their  day. 
Ascham  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  Phillips  in  the  seven 
teenth,  had  the  same  horror  of  foreign  and  outlandish 
terms.  Arthur  Golding  in  1565  complained  that 

"All  good  inditers  find 

Our  English  tongue  is  driven  almost  out  of  mind; 
Dismember'd,  hack'd,  maim'd,  rent,  and  torne, 
Defaced,  patcli'd,  marr'd,  and  made  a  skorne." 

These  protests  were  of  little  avail.  Many  of  the  words 
that  knocked  for  admission  into  the  language  were  ur 
gently  needed,  and  it  threw  open  its  doors  and  let  them 
in.  The  philosophic  poet  Daniel  coined  the  splendid  class 
of  words  with  the  prefix  inter,  to  denote  reciprocation. 
Coleridge  substituted  the  fine  word  ancestral  for  the  lum 
bering  ancestorial.  It  is  probable  that  more  than  thirty 
thousand  words  have  been  added  to  our  recognized  vo 
cabulary  since  the  appearance  of  Johnson's  dictionary. 
Who  can  doubt  that  this  has  been,  for  the  most  part,  a 
positive  gain?  Look  at  the  French  words  which  have 
forced  their  way  into  our  language  within  the  present 
century.  Ennui,  blase,  employe,  debut,  nonchalance,  pro- 


AMERICAKISMS.  327 

gramme,  renaissance,  soiree, —  how  could  we  dispense  with 
any  of  these?  Had  they  not  met  a  positive  want  of  the 
language  they  would  never  have  established  themselves 
in  the  dictionary.  Prestige,  meaning  the  presumption 
which  past  successes  beget  of  future  ones,  is  a  coinage  of 
rare  felicity.  Exploitation,  verve,  nuances,  badinage,  finesse, 
personnel,  which  are  now  hovering  on  the  confines  of  Eng 
lish,  are  pretty  sure  to  be  domesticated  in  it.  Persiflage 
(light,  mocking  talk,  bantering  on  grave  or  comic  themes), 
which  Sydney  Smith  parodies  when  he  speaks  of  a  meas 
ure  as  being  rejected  "  with  Percivalism  and  contempt," 
is  a  word  for  which  we  have  no  equipollent  one.  Soli 
darity,  a  term  invented  by  the  French  communists,  and 
popularized  by  Kossuth  in  his  visit  to  England  and  this 
country,  and  which  signifies  a  fellowship  in  gain  and  loss, 
in  victory  and  defeat, —  that  the  men  or  things  of  which 
it  is  affirmed  are  indissolubly  united,  or  all  in  the  same 
bottom, — is  so  convenient  that,  though  new  even  in  France, 
it  is  already  printed  in  italic  in  our  dictionaries.  Sociology, 
which  gives  a  name  to  a  late  work  of  Herbert  Spencer, 
is  so  apt  a  designation  of  a  new  science  that  it  will  be  in 
vain  to  struggle  against  it.  Equally  convenient  are  such 
coinages  as  atavism,  dissimilation,  extradition,  and  neutrali 
zation.  Police  and  reconnoitre,  which  were  once  ridiculed 
by  the  "Spectator"  and  other  English  periodicals,  have 
been  so  long  domesticated  in  the  language  that  they  have 
almost  lost  their  foreign  look. 

Caesar  used  to  say:  "Avoid  a  new  word  as  you  would 
a  rock."  The  rule  is  often  quoted  by  rhetoricians,  and  is 
certainly  a  good  one  within  certain  limits ;  but  where,  had 
it  been  rigidly  followed,  would  have  been  the  boasted  copi 
ousness  of  our  glorious  English  tongue?  Had  every  new 


328  AMERICANISMS. 

word  been  branded  and  outlawed  by  our  ancestors,  would 
not  the  language  have  been  dwarfed  in  its  cradle?     Let 
us  try,  by  all  legitimate  and  proper  means,  to  preserve  the 
purity  of  "  the  well  of  English  undefiled."     Let  us  mend 
the  walls  where  they  are  broken,  and  gather  out  the  stones, 
and  clear  away  the  weeds  and  briers,  with  which   it  has 
been  overgrown  and  choked.     But  let  us  not  prevent  its 
waters  from  running.     Let  it  be  a  stream,  and  not  a  tank. 
However  desirable  it  may  be  to  restrain  language  within 
due  bounds,  and   especially  to  check  that  undergrowth  of 
words  which  threatens  to  choke  up  and  impoverish  its  great 
roots,  it  is  still  more  desirable  that  it  should  be  chartered 
with  sufficient  liberty  to  embrace  all  the  new  demands  that 
are  made  upon  it  from  age  to  age.     It  is  thus,  only,  as  an 
able  writer  has  said,  that  language  really  becomes,  in  a 
figurative  sense,  the  depository  of  history.     It  is  thus  that 
the-  phraseology  of  one  age  differs  from  the  phraseology  of 
another;  and  that  hence  we  are  enabled  to  see  reflected  in 
the  writings  of  Chaucer,  Shakspeare,  and  Defoe,  and  of  the 
Addisons,  the  Goldsmiths,  and  of  the  Byrons,  as  in  a  mir 
ror,  not  only  the  vernacular  idiom  of  the  period,  but  its 
moral  and  social  peculiarities.     The  languages  which  are 
likely  to  live  the  longest,  and  to  spread  most  widely,  are 
those  which  welcome  most  readily  the  terms  which  advanc 
ing  knowledge  needs;  and  it  is  because  our  English  tongue 
is  so  catholic  and  hospitable  that  we  believe  it,  though  five 
hundred  years  old,  to  have  only  started  on  its  grand  career. 
The  necessity  and  fitness  of  many  of  the  words  coined 
in  America  no  sensible  man  can  doubt.    What  equivalents 
can  be  found  in  Johnson's  dictionary,  or  Richardson's,  for 
such  Western  terms   as   sawyer,  cut-off,  and   broad-horn? 
These  words  denote  certain  peculiarities  of  the  Mississippi 


AMERICANISMS.  329 

river,  and  convey  to  those  who  are  familiar  with  its  navi 
gation  perfectly  distinct  ideas.     So  to  fall  a  tree,  to  log, 
to  raft,  lumbering,  are  words  which   have   sprung   up  in 
the  great  forest-belts  of  our  country,  but  which  England 
lacks,  simply  because  she  has  no  pineries,  or  great  forest- 
belts,  where  the  pine  grows  almost  exclusively,  and  there 
fore  no  such  operations  as  these  words  describe.     In  felling 
the  pine  trees  it   is  necessary  that  they  should  fall  in  a 
particular  direction,  lest  they  lodge;  it  is  necessary  also  to 
haul   the  logs  on  sleds  to  a  stream,  where  they  may  be 
rafted  (that  is,  bound  together)  and  set  afloat;  and  hence 
the  verbs  to  raft  and  to  log.     Again,  in  traversing  these 
forests,  it   is  often  necessary  to  ascend   a  stream,  disem 
bark,  and  carry  the  canoe  and  its  contents  over  a  height 
of  land  to   another   stream  flowing   in  an  opposite  direc 
tion.     In  the  Eastern  States  this  height  of  land  is  called 
a  carry;  in  the  Northwest,  where  the  voyageurs  (that  is, 
the  men  who  paddle  your  canoe  on  the  streams  or  along 
the  shores  of  the  broad  lakes)  are  of  French  extraction, 
it  is  called  a  portage.    In  the  high  Northern  regions,  where 
the  boats  are  made  of  white  birch,  they  are  called  canoes. 
In  the  temperate  regions,  where  they  are  excavated  from 
the  trunks   of  trees,  they  are   called  pirogues   (from  the 
French  pirogue,  originally  an  Indian  word). 

A  convenient  and  expressive  term,  which  we  had  too 
frequent  occasion  to  use  during  our  late  civil  war,  is  de 
moralize.  It  is  the  only  word  which  Noah  Webster,  who 
spent  a  life-time  in  the  study  of  words,  ever  coined.  We 
have  his  own  statement  that  it  was  first  used  in  a  tract 
which  he  wrote  on  the  French  revolution,  "  about  the  year 
1793."  A  ludicrous  misapplication  of  the  word,  in  which 
it  was  used  in  an  individual  instead  of  its  true  collective 


330  AMERICANISMS. 

sense,  is  furnished  by  the  familiar  story  of  a  soldier  at 
the  battle  of  Fredericksburg.  Having  skulked  to  the  rear, 
or  to  a  considerable  distance  from  the  fight,  he  was  en 
countered  by  an  indignant  officer,  who  demanded:  "What 
are  you  here  for,  you  rascal?  Are  you  wounded?1'  "No, 
colonel,"  coolly  replied  the  man,  "  I  can't  exactly  say  I'm 
wounded;  but  Fm  dreadfully  demoralized."  Who  will  deny 
the  utility  in  a  new  country  of  such  words  as  diggings, 
betterments,  or  improvements,  and  squatter?  So  buncombe 
(applied  to  electioneering  speeches),  caucus,  breadstuff 
(bread,  corn-meal,  or  flour),  freshet,  grit,  gully,  to  lobby,  to 
lynch,  mass-meeting,  rowdy,  to  snicker  (to  laugh  slyly),  to 
spot  (a  rogue),  and  splurge,  are  terms  which,  if  not  im 
peratively  demanded  by  novel  things,  practices  and  cus 
toms  of  the  New  World,  are,  at  least,  very  significant  and 
convenient.  What  can  be  more  ludicrously  expressive  than 
the  phrase  sometimes  heard  in  New  England,  "  He  has  no 
sprawl?"  Could  any  word  express  more  vividly  the  inertia 
of  a  man  who  is  not  only  too  lazy  to  sit  upright,  but 
even  too  lazy  to  stretch  himself  when  he  is  lying  flat  on 
his  back?  Two  other  words,  which,  if  not  absolutely 
needed,  are  very  convenient,  are  the  American  outsider 
and  comeouter.  The  first,  according  to  Professor  Marsh, 
owes  its  circulation,  if  not  its  birth,  to  the  Baltimore  Con 
vention,  in  1844,  which  nominated  Mr.  Polk  for  the  Presi 
dency,  Some  persons,  not  members  of  the  convention, 
having  attempted  to  control  its  action  in  an  irregular 
way,  a  member  rose  and  energetically  protested  against 
all  interference  with  the  meeting  by  outsiders.  The  word 
comeouter,  which  seems  to  have  been  coined  in  defiance  of 
all  the  ordinary  rules  of  derivation,  denotes  a  class  of 
independent  thinkers  who,  priding  themselves  upon  their 


AMERICANISMS.  331 

contempt  for  venerable  shams  and  hoary  conventionalities, 
"  come  out "  from  the  sects  and  parties  that  are  supposed 
to  maintain  them. 

Again,  many  words  which  have  been  ridiculed  by  our 
transatlantic  cousins  as  belonging  to  what  Sydney  Smith 
called  "  the  American  language,"  are  of  genuine  British 
stock.  They  have  simply  become  obsolete  in  the  land  of 
their  birth,  while  they  have  been  kept  alive  here.  As  our 
nasal  drawl  is  from  Suffolk,  England,  where  they  say  eend 
for  end,  ceoiv  for  cow,  eout  for  out,  just  like  some  New  Eng- 
landers,  so  a  large  portion  of  our  so-called  vulgarisms, 
which,  like  chickens,  are  apt  to  go  home  to  roost,  were 
hatched  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  Thus  the  word 
bug,  which  in  America  is  used  as  a  general  appellation  of 
the  beetle  tribe,  is  a  genuine  old  English  term.  The  mean 
ing  of  the  word,  according  to  Wedgwood,  is  simply  an 
object  of  terror,  from  the  cry  of  Bo!  Boo!  Boh!  made  by 
a  person,  often  covering  his  face  to  represent  the  unknown, 
to  frighten  children.  In  a  secondary  sense  the  name  is 
given  to  insects  considered  an  object  of  disgust  and  hor 
ror.  Thus  Bacon  says  in  a  letter:  "A  bug  hath  bussed 
in  my  ears."  In  England,  to-day,  the  word  is  appropriated 
to  the  noisome  inhabitants  of  beds;  and  so  perfectly  ob 
solete  has  the  old  meaning  become,  that  when,  some  years 
ago,  an  edition  of  Edgar  A.  Poe's  works  was  published  in 
London,  the  editor  was  compelled  to  alter  the  title  of  the 
story  entitled  "The  Gold  Bug"  to  "The  Golden  Beetle," 
to  avoid  offending  English  ears.  Again,  we  talk  of  big 
bugs;  but  one  of  the  meanings  of  the  word  is  "  swelling," 
"protuberant";  and  in  Linconshire  bug  is  still  used  for 
"  proud."  "  In  my  time,  at  Rugby  school,"  says  Grose, 
"  bug  was  the  regular  term  for  conceited,  proud."  In  this 


332  AMERICANISMS. 

sense  the  word,  Wedgwood  thinks,  seems  to  rest  on  the 
notion  of  frightening  with  a  loud  noise,  blustering, 
threatening,  and  is  thus  connected  with  bug,  bug-bear. 
Fuller,  in  his  "  Pisgah  Sight  of  Palestine,"  praises  the 
New  Jerusalem  for  being  "  slicker  than  any  fabric  the 
earth  afforded."  An  intelligent  writer  states  that  the 
Bible  has  "reckon,"  and  that  Southey  uses  "realize,"  in 
the  precise  sense  in  which  they  are  used  colloquially  here. 
Burke  has  "  pretty  considerable,"  and  Miss  Burney  "  I 
trembled  a  few."  The  modern  phrase,  "  let  drive,"  which 
many  suppose  to  be  a  vulgarism,  was  used  by  Spenser;  and 
the  American  politician  who  some  years  ago  expressed  his 
willingness,  in  a  certain  contingency,  "  to  let  the  Union 
slide,"  had  for  his  phraseology,  if  not  for  his  sentiment, — 
as  Professor  Marsh  has  remarked, —  the  best  authority,  that 
of  Shakspeare.  So  the  word  guess,  which  a  Yankee  has  on 
his  lips  as  often  as  a  Frenchman  has  glory,  is  not  only  used 
by  Locke  and  Thomas  Fuller,  but  is  as  old  as  Chaucer,  who 

says: 

"Her  yelwe  here  was  broicled  in  a  tresse, 
Behind  hire  back,  a  yerde  long,  I  guesse." 

Izaak  Walton,  in  his  Life  of  Hooker,  says  "  His  admission 
into  this  place  was  the  very  beginning  of  those  oppositions 
and  anxieties  which  till  then  this  good  man  was  a  stranger 
to;  and  of  which  the  Reader  may  guess  by  what  follows." 
So  the  Yankee  term  sight,  for  "  a  good  many,"  dates  back 
as  far  as  the  fifteenth  century,  when  we  find  by  the 
writings  of  a  high-born  and  accomplished  lady  of  that  time, 
that  "  abomynable  sight  of  monkes "  was  elegant  English 
for  a  "  large  company  of  friars."  So  old  fogy  is  no  new 
comer,  but  literally  "  an  old  fogy "  in  the  language. 
The  word  gumption,  signifying  acuteness,  is  said  by  a 


AMERICANISMS.  333 

writer  in  "  Notes  and  Queries "  to  be  still  in  use  in  the 
south  of  Scotland.  Prink,  to  deck,  to  adorn,  is  used  in  the 
Eastern  States  in  precisely  the  sense  in  which  it  was  used 
by  Spenser  and  Shakspeare.  Lam,  which  is  obsolescent  in 
America  now,  was  a  familiar  term  in  England  in  the  time 
of  Charles  II.  Some  etymologists  derive  it  from  lemja,  a 
Norse  word,  meaning  to  give  a  sound  drubbing;  a  late 
English  writer  thinks  it  is  derived  from  the  fate  of  one 
Doctor  Lamb,  an  astrologer,  who  was  knocked  in  the  head 
by  the  mob  in  the  preceding  reign.  The  verb  to  progress, 
which  English  purists  have  specially  branded,  may  be  found 
in  Shakspeare's  King  John;  in  Milton's  "Treatise  of  Ref 
ormation  in  England,"  where  we  read  of  certain  persons 
"progressing  the  dateless  and  irrevoluble  circle  of  Eter 
nity  " ;  and  in  the  folio  edition  of  Bailey's  "  Universal 
Dictionary,"  published  in  1755,  where  it  is  given  as  a 
neuter.  Shakspeare  uses  learn  in  the  sense  of  teach,  as  in 
Troilus  and  Cressida,  II,  1: 

"  Toad-stool,  learn  me  the  proclamation  " ; 
and  so  do  Drayton  and  even  Langlande  in  the  fourteenth 
century.     Muss,  too,  is  good  Shakspearean  English,  and  the 
word  is  used  also  by  Massinger  and  Fletcher. 

No  so-called  Americanism  has  been  more  sharply  rated 
than  the  employment  of  sick  for  ill,  English  critics  insist 
ing  that  sick  shall  be  applied  only  to  a  certain  condition 
of  the  stomach.  Not  so  Shakspeare,  as  will  be  seen  by  the 
following  extracts: 

Ligarius.    *  *  *    What's  to  do? 

Brutus.    A  piece  of  work  that  will  make  sick  men  whole. 

Ligarius.    But  are  not  some  whole  that  we  must  make  siekf 

Nor  Milton: 

"  Despair 
Tended  the  sick,  busiest  from  couch  to  couch." 


334  AMERICANISMS. 

Nor  Pope: 

"Shut,  shut  the  door,  good  John!  fatigued,  I  said; 
Tie  up  the  knocker;  say  I'm  sick, —  I'm  dead." 

It  is  said  that  the  word  ill,  in  the  present  English  sense, 
does  not  occur  once  in  King  James's  version  of  the  Bible. 

Another  supposed  Americanism  is  baggage,  which  is  said 
to  be  improperly  used  for  luggage.  The  best  English  lexi 
cographers,  however,  define  luggage  as  "heavy,  cumbrous 
baggage,  or  package," — that  is,  for  example,  the  bulky, 
ponderous  movables  which  an  army,  or  a  family  when 
moving,  transport  with  them.  The  phrase  "  bag  and  bag 
gage"  is  one  of  the  most  familiar  in  English  literature.  A 
late  English  writer,  Rev.  W.  L.  Blackley,  in  his  "  Word- 
Gossip,"  speaking  of  the  American  use  of  slim,  as  applied 
to  attendance,  says  that  "  it  is  nearer  the  original  meaning 
in  which  the  word  came  to  us  than  either  of  the  senses  in 
which  we  are  wont  to  use  it.  It  does  not  strike  us  as 
awkward  to  say,  '  there  was  a  thin  attendance,'  which  is 
equivalent  to  the  ordinary  meaning  of  slim;  and  still  less 
do  we  object  to  the  expression  '  a  bad  attendance,'  which  is 
the  sense  in  which  we  first  received  the  word,  from  the 
German  schlimm,  'bad,1  its  root  idea  in  that  language 
probably  signifying  'crooked,'  'irregular.'"  So  clever,  in 
the  sense  of  "good-natured,"  plunder  in  the  American 
sense,  overslaugh,  and  wilt,  may  all  be  defended  by  the  best 
English  authority.  The  truth  is,  while  John  Bull  has  been 
sneering  at  us  for  our  vulgarisms,  it  is  we  who  have 
adhered  to,  and  he  who  has  departed  from,  the  ancient  and 
sound  usage  in  regard  to  these  words;  it  is  the  island,  and 
not  the  continent,  that  has  corrupted  the  tongue. 

The  force  of  these  considerations  our  English  censors 
are  beginning  at  last  themselves  to  acknowledge.  They 


AMERICANISMS.  335 

are  beginning  to  admit  that  the  vast  number  of  words, 
obsolete  or  provincial  in  England,  which  were  brought  to 
this  country  generations  ago,  which  have  cropped  up  among 
us,  and  which,  when  met  with  in  American  writers,  have 
an  outlandish  look  to  an  Englishman,  are  a  clear  gain  to 
the  language.  A  late  number  of  "Blackwood"  has  an 
article  on  this  subject,  in  which  it  admits  that  these  words 
and  phrases  have  been  branded,  very  unjustly,  with  the 
name  of  Americanisms,  when  many  of  them  are  not  only 
pure  Anglicisms,  but  made  English  for  evermore  in  the 
pages  of  Spenser,  Shakspeare  and  Ben  Jonson.  It  is  not 
the  first  time  in  history  that  the  language  of  a  people  has 
been  preserved  in  greater  purity  in  the  colonies  than  in  the 
mother  country.  The  descendants  of  the  Greek  colonists  of 
Asia  Minor,  it  is  said,  speak  a  language  much  nearer  to  the 
old  Greek  than  do  the  citizens  of  Greece.  Dutch  resembles 
the  old  German  more  closely  than  the  present  dialect  of 
Prussia;  and  Spanish  is  more  Latin-like  than  the  Italian. 
Among  these  legitimate  English  words,  current  in  Amer 
ica,  but  little  known  in  English,  "Blackwood1'  cites  these: 
Bender — "to  go  on  the  bender" — from  bend,  to  crook  the 
elbow  in  lifting  the  glass  to  the  mouth;  fall,  the  beautiful 
synonym  of  "autumn";  meech,  an  old  Shakspearean  word 
for  "skulk";  platform,  in  its  political  sense,  a  term  fre 
quently  employed  by  the  writers  of  the  Commonwealth; 
rile,  to  vex  a  person  by  exciting  his  temper;  sag;  slick,  as 
used  in  the  phrase,  "  he  goes  slick  about  his  business " ; 
slide,  in  the  sense  of  which  we  have  already  spoken; 
splurge,  to  swagger  and  make  a  great  fuss  and  display  of 
one's  wealth;  squelch,  of  the  old  English  use  of  which  we 
have  an  example  in  the  old  ballad  in  which  it  is  said  that 
St.  George  "  did  the  dragon  fell,  and  gave  him  a  plaguy 


336  AMEEICAISTISMS. 

squelch"1' ';  squirm,  to  wriggle  like  an  eel  or  worm;  stent  or 
stint,  and  wilt. 

All  these  words,  excepting  bender,  the  critic  in  "  Black- 
wood  "  declares  "  are  worthy  of  the  favor  of  English 
writers  and  speakers,  and  can  boast  an  ancient,  and  in 
some  cases  an  illustrious,  ancestry."  Another  class  of 
words,  which  the  critic  deems  true  Americanisms,  such  as 
"buncombe,11  "lobbying,"  "wire-pulling,"  "log-rolling," 
"  axe-grinding,"  he  thinks  the  purists  will  not  be  able  long 
to  shut  out  from  the  dictionary,  especially  as  the  English 
are  becoming  very  familiar  with  the  practices  they  describe. 
But  a  third  class  of  Americanisms,  which  are  clamoring 
for  admission  into  the  language,  he  pronounces  "  offensive,11 
and  declares  should  be  resisted  at  the  threshold.  These 
are  donate,  locate;  balance,  for  a  part  of  anything;  to  post 
or  post  up  a  person;  pled  for  "pleaded";  avails  for  "pro 
ceeds";  illy  for  "ill";  quite  for  "very";  retiracy,  boss, 
at  that,  as  in  the  sentence,  "  He  has  a  scolding  wife,  and 
an  ugly  one  at  that"-,  and  many  others  which  are  re 
garded  as  slang  as  well  by  educated  Americans  as  by 
Englishmen.  For  these  words,  the  meanings  of  which  are 
fully  expressed  by  old  and  legitimate  words,  there  is  no 
necessity  whatever;  and  we  are  perfectly  willing  that  the 
interlopers  should  be  handed  over  to  the  critic,  to  be  ex 
communicated.  It  must  be  admitted,  too,  that  some  oi 
our  words,  which  are  legitimate  enough  of  themselves,  are 
too  often  overworked,  as  Mr.  Choate  said  of  the  sheriff's  par 
ticiple.  As  Dominie  Sampson  could  never  open  his  mouth 
without  letting  out  "Prodigious!"  so  Americans  are  sure 
to  "  guess,"  "  reckon,"  "  presume,"  "  calculate,"  whenever 
they  give  an  opinion. 


INDEX. 


Adams,  John  Quincy,  on  the  ef 
fects  of  political  life,  317. 

Addison,  his  style,  21 ;  his  prepa 
ration  for  writing,  35 ;  his  lit 
erary  nicety,  37. 

Americanisms,  320-336 ;  their  or 
igin,  320,  321,  323;  limitations 
of  the  term,  322,  323 ;  some  of 
them  indispensable,  328-330; 
their  expressiveness,  330 ;  many 
of  British  stock,  331-335; 
adopted  in  England,  336;  ille 
gitimate,  336. 

Andersen,  Hans  Christian,  115. 

Anglers,  denounced,  183,  184 ; 
qualities  they  need,  193-195; 
their  intimacy  with  nature,  196. 

Angling,  182-199;  its  delights, 
182,  183,  196, 197;  practiced  by 
eminent  men,  185-188;  also  by 
ladies,  188, 189 ;  in  Maine  lakes, 
190,  191;  demands  patience, 
192;  and  skill,  195;  healthful 
and  innocent,  196;  reveals 
character,  197,  198;  not  cruel, 
198,  199. 

Antony,  Mark,  his  angling 
tricks,  188. 

Authors,  their  lives  inconsistent 
with  their  teachings,  128. 


Bacon,  Lord,  his  style,  21;  his 
egotism,  90;  on  human  na 
ture,  211;  on  healthfullness  of 
the  literary  and  the  religious 
life,  228 ;  on  memory,  256. 

Barrow,  Isaac,  on  jesting,'  202; 
dull  when  at  school,  248. 


Beard,  George  M.,  M.D.,  on 
longevity  of  brain-workers, 
227;  on  longevity  of  the  pre 
cocious,  229. 

Beauty,  imperfection  essential  to 
physical  and  moral,  119,  120. 

"  Blues,  the,"  and  their  remedy, 
72-84;  their  causes,  72,  73,  75, 
77;  how  cured,  77-84;  Dr. 
Johnson's,  72-78 ;  Southey  on, 
80 ;  exorcised  by  music,  83. 

Boileau,  his  self-praise,  93. 

Bolingbroke,  Lord,  his  anecdote 
of  a  great  scholar,  144;  his 
memory,  157. 

Books,  voluminous,  little  read, 
68,  69. 

Borrowing,  literary,  great  geni 
uses  addicted  to  it,  264,  265; 
Shakspeare's,  265;  the  poet 
Gray's,  266;  Voltaire  on,  259. 

Bossuet,  his  corrections,  37. 

Brain-work,  healthful,  225-228; 
when  injurious,  228;  effects  of 
excessive,  246. 

Brilliant  men,  less  useful  than 
men  of  common  sense,  178, 179. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  his  style,  22. 

Bruyere,  La,  saying  of,  9. 

Bryant,  William  C.,  secret  of  his 
health  in  old  age,  222. 

Buflbn,  his  painstaking,  37;  his 
egotism,  90 ;  on  mental  produc 
tion,  256. 

Bunyan,  John,  saying  of,  210. 

Burke,  Edmund,  his  style,  25 ;  his 
care  in  writing,  37. 

Burns,  Robert,  93 ;  his  excesses, 
126,  127;  on  fat  men,  134,  135; 
on  charity  in  judging  others, 
210;  his  courtesy,  301. 

Burton,  Robert,  his  cure  of  "  the 


337 


338 


INDEX. 


blues,"  82;  on  angling,  192; 
his  "  Anatomy,"  228. 

Butler,  Samuel,  his  self-praise,  93. 

Buxton,  Jedediah,  his  memory, 
161. 

Buxton,  Sir  T.  Fowell,  anecdote 
of,  110. 

Byron,  Lord,  roused  by  Jeffrey's 
criticism,  107;  connection  of 
his  virtues  and  vices,  127 ;  his 
ridicule  of  angling,  194,  195, 
198;  a  literary  borrower,  269. 


Csesar,  Julius,  his  style,  21;  his 
treatment  of  Catullus,  108. 

Campbell,  Thomas,  on  original 
ity,  259. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  his  qualities  as 
a  writer,  12-14,  124;  his  por 
traiture  of  Dr.  Johnson,  14; 
advice  to  a  new  author,  107 ;  a 
poor  listener,  285. 

Carriages,  tests  of  gentility,  297, 
298. 

Castera,  translator  of  Camoens, 
quoted,  262. 

Centenarians,  214-217. 

Cervantes,  37,  38. 

Chalmers,  his  native  feral  force, 
213. 

Chateaubriand,  his  vanity,  94. 

Chaucer,  his  egotism,  89,  90 ;  his 
importations  of  French  words, 
326 ;  his  borrowings,  264. 

Chesterfield,  Lord,  not  a  gentle 
man,  301 ;  his  Letters,  301. 

Cicero,  his  egotism,  88. 

Clarke,  Adam,  anecdote  of,  59; 
dull  in  boyhood,  248. 

Classics,  the  ancient,  8. 

Clay,  Henry,  his  memory,  146. 

Climate,  a  cause  of  melancholy, 
75,  76. 

Cobbett,  William,  his  style,  7; 
his  egotism,  95. 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  his  advice  to  the 
criticised,  108 ;  his  alleged  pla 
giarisms,  261 ;  origin  of  his 
"  Ancient  Mariner,"  271. 


Coleridge,  Rev.  E.,  his  memory, 
164. 

Comte,  Auguste,  his  abstinence 
from  newspapers,  66,  67. 

Constantine,  the  Emperor,  say 
ing  of,  109. 

Controversy,  personal,  101. 

Conversation,  its  advantages,  280 ; 
on  what  its  force  depends,  283 ; 
of  men  of  the  town,  ib.;  of 
literary  lions,  284 ;  controversy  % 
its  foe,  ib. 

Cornaro,  Lewis,  219,  222. 

Corawallis,  Lord,  saying  of,  313. 

Corwin,  Hon.  Thomas,  on  office- 
holding,  318. 

Cramming,  the  vice  of  public 
schools,  145. 

Criticism,  sensitiveness  to,  100- 
110 ;  what  makes  it  rankle,  105 ; 
petty,  unjust,  114;  Homeric, 
114;  of  men  of  genius,  123, 124. 

Curran,  John  Philpot,  his  melan 
choly,  74. 

Cuvier,  his  memory,  159. 


Dawdling,  literary,  39. 

DeCailly,  the  Chevalier,  quoted, 
255. 

Defects,  their  compensations,  125, 
126. 

DeLaunoy,  56. 

DeMaistre,  Count  Joseph,  on 
style,  111;  his  conservatism, 
176. 

DeQuiucey,  Thomas,  his  style,  10 ; 
on  the  German  style,  17;  his 
cure  of  hypochondria,  78;  his 
memory,  165 ;  on  French  con 
versation,  283,  284;  on  logom 
achy  in  conversation,  284. 

DeRossi,  Ignatius,  his  memory, 
158. 

DeStael,  Madame,  180. 

Dickens,  Charles,  248. 

Discoveries  and  inventions,  sug 
gested  bv  previous  ones,  272, 
273. 

Dryden,  John,  his  egotism,  90. 


INDEX. 


339 


Dullness,    of    eminent   men    in 
childhood,  247-250. 


Education,  haste  in,  243;  effects 

of  too  early,  243-246,  250. 
Egotism,    of     Shakspeare    and 

other  celebrated  men,  86-99; 

of    Shakspeare's    heroes    and 

heroines,  88,  89 ;  Coleridge  on, 

95,96. 
Elizabeth,    Queen    of   England, 

saying  of,  321. 
Emerson,  R.  W.,  his  style,  26,  27 ; 

on  property  in  thought,  258; 

his  definition  of  a  great  man, 

263. 
English  language,  the,  its  fitness 

for  literary  composition,  52,  53 ; 

its  rapid  spread,  53;    should 

welcome   needed   new  words, 

328. 

Epicurus,  his  egotism,  88. 
Erring,  the,  a  plea  for,  207-213; 

too   harshly  judged,  208-210; 

their  temptations,  208. 
Excellence,  its  drawbacks,  112, 

120,  121;  negative,  121. 
Exercise,  79,  217. 


Fat  men,  celebrated,  138,  139; 
their  good  nature,  136. 

Fatness,  its  advantages  and  dis 
advantages,  131-140 ;  punished 
by  the  Spartans,  139;  relieved 
by  the  Krenzbrunnen  waters, 
139. 

Fontenelle,  his  treatment  of  criti 
cisms,  110. 

Fools,  173-181 ;  why  they  offend 
us,  173 ;  why  happy,  174 ;  their 
social  advantages,  175,  176; 
essential  to  society,  176 ;  make 
best  reformers,  177,  178 ;  make 
society  endurable,  178,  179 ;  as 
fireside  companions,  179 ;  born, 
not  made,  181;  Charles  Lamb 
on,  174. 


Foster,  John,  his  preparation  for 
writing,  35. 

Fox,  Charles  James,  anecdote  of, 
149. 

Frederick  the  Great,  anecdote  of, 
109;  his  reply  to  D'Alembert, 
109. 

French,  the,  their  style,  18,  19; 
their  faults,  20. 

Froude,  James  Anthony,  his 
style,  25. 

Fuller,  Thomas,  D.D.,  his  mem 
ory  163 ;  his  rules  for  improv 
ing  the  memory,  171, 172. 


G 


Galen,  219. 

Genius,  receptive,  10,  256;  its 
modesty,  85-99;  not  ignorant 
of  its  powers,  96,  97;  its  in 
firmities,  126;  often  tardy  in 
its  development,  247 ;  a  debtor 
to  its  predecessors,  266. 

Gentility,  difiiculty  of  defining 
it,  287,  288;  its  requisites,  295, 
296,  297 ;  defined  by  negatives, 
296;  divided  and  sub-divided 
by  women,  296 ;  repose  a  mark 
of  it,  299 ;  cannot  be  put  on  at 
will,  302. 

Gentleman,  a,  Dr.  Johnson's  defi 
nition  of  the  word,  288;  Sel- 
den's  and  Gibbon's  derivation 
of  it,  288;  De  Tocqueville  on 
it,  290 ;  defined  by  Archdeacon 
Hare,  290;  also  by  Maginn, 
291;  the  Byronic  idea  of  it, 
291  ;  variously  defined,  292- 
298;  politeness  not  a  criterion 
of  one,  294;  true  characteris 
tics  of,  287-304;  described  by 
Chaucer,  304 ;  Burns's  idea  of, 
295;  James  the  First's  notion 
of,  295 ;  Sir  Robert  Peel  on,  295. 

Geofirin,  Madame,  anecdote  of, 
286. 

Germans,  the,  their  literary  merits 
and  delects,  15-18. 

Gibbon,  his  style,  8;  his  sneers 
at  Christianity,  23;  his  "De- 


340 


ISTDEX. 


cline  and  Fall,"  38;  his  love- 
making,  135. 

Giles,  Henry,  on  fat  men,  131. 

Gladstone,  Sir  William,  his  style, 
31. 

Gluck,  composer  of  music,  273. 

Goethe,  48;  on  human  weakness 
es,  123,  210;  irregularity  of  his 
studies,  154 ;  on  originality,  257. 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  his  style,  27, 
28 ;  his  vanity,  93 ;  his  borrow 
ings,  271,  272. 

"Good  people,"  why  disliked, 
122, 123. 

Gravity  of  demeanor,  205,  206. 

Gray,  Thomas,  his  borrowings, 
11,  266;  his  painstaking,  37; 
his  melancholy,  73 ;  his  learn 
ing  and  fastidiousness,  121, 122 ; 
his  individuality,  276. 

Guizot,  his  style,  22. 

H 

Hall,  Robert,  his  style,  25;  his 
high  ideal,  37. 

Hamnierton,-  P.  G.,  on  value  of 
newspapers,  67;  on  good  and 
bad  memories,  154. 

Hare,  Archdeacon,  on  the  uncon 
sciousness  of  genius,  97. 

Hazlitt,  William,  his  self-esteem, 
94. 

Helps,  Sir  Arthur,  on  criminals, 
211. 

Hildebrand,  Karl,  on  style,  51,  52. 

Hobbes,  Thomas,  90. 

Hogarth,  his  vanity,  92. 

Hopkins,  Dr.  Samuel,  his  gentle- 
manliness,  301. 

Hothouse  education,  241-250 ;  in 
Chicago,  241 ;  in  England,  New 
England,  and  New  York,  241, 
243  ;  its  eflects,  242,  244^6. 
249. 

Houdin,  M.,  166. 

Howard,  John,  120. 

Hugo,  Victor,  his  egotism,  95. 

Hume,  the  historian,  MS.J  style,  8. 

Hunt,  Leigh,  on  angling,  198. 

Hunter,  John,  his  self-esteem,  91. 


Huxley,  Thomas  Henry,  his  style, 
25. 

I 

Ideal,  the,  and  the  Real,  111-130. 

Ideas,  belong  to  him  who  uses 
them  best,  271. 

Inventions  and  discoveries,  how 
made,  257,  258,  274;  made  si 
multaneously  in  different  coun 
tries,  274. 

J 

Jeffrey,  Lord,  23;  his  leanness, 
136. 

Jesting,  excess  of  to-day,  201,  202. 

Jewell,  Bishop  John,  his  mem 
ory,  158. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  saying  of, 
37 ;  his  hypochondria,  72 ;  how 
he  subdued  his  melancholy,  78 ; 
on  angling,  184;  why  disgusted 
with  angling,  184;  on  charges 
of  plagiarism,  251 ;  on  fiction, 
254 ;  anecdote  of,  281 ;  his  rude 
ness,  301. 

Johnson,  Edward,  M.D.,  on  the 
education  of  children,  250. 

Jon  son,  Ben,  his  memory,  162. 

Joubert,  Joseph,  saying  of,  9 ;  on 
familiar  words,  30. 

Journalism,  its  influence,  61,  65, 
66,  69 ;  its  rapid  improvement, 
64;  should  employ  the  best 
thinkers,  68. 


K 


Kant,  length  of  his  sentences,  18 ; 
anecdote  of,  282. 

Kean,  Edmund,  the  elder,  anec 
dote  of,  59;  his  treatment  of 
newspaper  attacks,  110;  his 
Richard  III,  273. 

Keats,  John,  his  verse,  43. 

Kepler,  his  egotism,  90. 

King,  Starr,  on  style,  41. 

Kneller,  Sir  Godfrey,  his  fond 
ness  for  praise,  58;  anecdote 
of,  92. 

Knox,  John,  his  egotism,  95. 


1KDEX. 


341 


Labor,  its  blessings,  80. 

Lamartine,  his  vanity,  94. 

Lamb,  Charles,  his  style,  21 ; 
made  wretched  by  idleness, 
80;  saying  of,  81;  on  John 
Howard,  120;  on  tools,  174, 175. 

Lamennais,  his  egotism,  55. 

Lampoons,  how  to  treat  them,  103. 

Lanclor,  Walter  Savage,  his  style, 
25 ;  on  political  life,  316. 

Language,  progressive,  824;  a 
depository  of  history,  328. 

Laughter,  83,  84. 

Lawson,  Professor  George,  his 
memory,  160. 

Lean  men,  celebrated,  134, 137. 

Learning,  a  little  not  "danger 
ous,"  65. 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  on  English 
journalism,  61. 

Leipsius,  Justus,  his  great  mem 
ory,  156. 

Lewis,  Dixon  H.,  M.C.,  138. 

Lewis,  Sir  George  C.,  on  centena- 
rianism,  214. 

Liebig,  Baron,  dull  at  school,  248. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  saying  of,  106 ; 
anecdote  of,  121. 

Listeners,  good,  welcome  in  so 
ciety,  282. 

Listening,  the  art  of,  279-286; 
qualities  it  demands,  279 ;  with 
the  eyes,  281,  282;  more  profit 
able  than  talking,  280. 

Literature,  "  light,'1  its  value,  62- 
67 ;  the  kind  demanded  by  the 
public,  69 ;  its  topics  exhausted, 
254. 

Longevity,  the  secret  of,  214-233 ; 
ignorance  of  its  causes,  214; 
its  conditions,  217;  how  af 
fected  by  city  life,  climate, 
diet,  cleanliness,  health,  and 
temperance,  217-220 ,-  a  gift  of 
Nature,  220;  an  Italian  on, 
221 ;  Cicero  on,  221 ;  excite 
ment  its  foe,  221,  222;  warm 
affections  prejudicial  to  it,  223 ; 
also,  overwork,  intense  enthu 


siasms,  and  night-work,  223- 
225;  eminent  men  who  have 
attained  to  it,  226,  227;  of 
graduates  of  Brown  Univer 
sity,  227;  precocity  not  un 
favorable  to  it,  229;  ennui, 
envy,  and  worry  its  foes,  230; 
promoted  by  avarice,  231;  of 
British  peers  and  the  Quak 
ers,  232;  a  blessing,  232;  how 
to  be  estimated,  233. 

Loquacity,  281,  283. 

Luther,  Martin,  sayings  of,  80; 
on  music,  83. 

Lyon,  William,  actor,  his  feat  of 
memory,  160,  161. 

M 

Macaulay,  his  style,  8,  24;  on 
style  of  magazine  and  review 
articles,  40 ;  his  essays,  63 ;  on 
the  attacks  upon  Dr.  Johnson, 
106;  his  indifference  to  criti 
cism,  108;  his  memory,  166- 
168;  compares  literature  with 
politics,  168. 

Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  his  mem 
ory,  165. 

Magliabecchi,  his  memory,  156. 

Marcy,  Hon.  William  L.,  anec 
dote  of,  249. 

Marivaux,  on  style,  21. 

Marl  borough,  the  Duke  of,  his 
sensitiveness  to  criticism,  104. 

Marmontel,  on  French  conversa 
tion,  284. 

Marsh,  Professor  George,  quoted, 
274. 

Martyn,  Henry,  missionary,  anec 
dote  of,  212. 

Mathews,  Charles,  the  elder,  his 
memory,  159;  his  loquacity, 
283. 

Matter-of-fact-men,  203,  204. 

Mazarin,  Cardinal,  his  treatment 
of  libels,  110. 

Mediocrity,  its  blessings,  179. 

Memory,  and  its  marvels,  141- 
172;  how  regarded  by  Cicero, 
141 ;  its  value  underrated,  141 ; 


342 


ItfDEX. 


the  fountain  of  thought,  142; 
its  value  to  statesmen  and  poli 
ticians,  143;  when  not  selec 
tive,  a  nuisance,  143-145 ;  a 
formal,  overestimated  in  public 
schools,  145 ;  requires  time, 
145;  kinds  of,  145,  146;  Mil 
ton's,  147,  148;  its  value  to 
artists  and  writers,  147;  value 
of  verbal,  147,  148;  its  sup 
posed  caprices,  149;  treasures 
pleasing  impressions  more 
easily  than  painful,  150;  _its 
connection  with  isolated  im 
pressions,  150;  how  affected 
by  injuries  to  brain,  151,  152; 
its  disadvantages,  when  tena 
cious,  152,  153;  value  of  its 
rejecting  power,  153-155;  a 
bad  one  often  the  best,  154; 
causes  of  its  feebleness,  155; 
marvelous  feats  of,  156-168; 
of  actors,  160 ;  its  unconscious 
action,  161,  162;  of  lawyers, 
161;  of  musicians,  164;  af 
fected  by  use  and  disuse,  166 ; 
systems  of  artificial,  168,  169; 
how  it  may  be  cultivated,  169- 
172;  its  retentiveness  depend 
ent  on  the  bodily  condition, 
172 ;  a  test  of  disease,  172. 

Michelet,  his  manner  of  writing, 
39. 

Miller,  Karl  Ottfried,  on  Poetry, 
259. 

Milton,  John,  his  egotism,  89; 
his  verbal  memory,  147,  148; 
his  borrowings,  268. 

Mirabeau,  a  literary  borrower, 
264. 

Misers,  long-lived,  231. 

Montaigne,  his  style,  21 ;  on  con 
versation,  281. 

Montesquieu,  his  originality,  264 ; 
in  society,  284. 

Moore,  John,  M.D.,  quoted,  246. 

Morality,  of  writers,  39,  40. 

Morse,  S.  F.  B.,  his  invention  of 
the  electric  telegraph,  273. 

Mozart,  his  memory,  164. 


Music,  a  remedy  for  melancholy, 
83. 

N 

Napier,  Sir  C.  J.,  his  style,  44. 

Napoleon,  his  style,  21 ;  his  in 
difference  to  style,  35;  his 
egotism,  94;  his  sensitiveness 
to  criticism,  104;  his  estima 
tion  of  Madame  de  R6musat, 
282. 

Nature,  slow  in  her  operations, 
245. 

Neal,  John,  why  forgotten,  14, 
15. 

Nelson,  Lord,  his  love  of  praise, 
94. 

Newman,  J.  H.,  his  style,  25,  26. 

Newspapers,  when  most  popular, 
12;  as  educators,  65,  66;  are 
contemporary  history,  66,  67. 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  dull  in  boy, 
hood,  248. 

Northcote,  painter,  his  vanity, 
92;  his  talk,  285. 


Office,  political,  avoided  in  ante- 
Revolution  times,  308;  penal 
ties  for  refusing  it  then,  308; 
poorly  remunerated,  309  ;  _  its 
annoyances  and  disappoint 
ments,  312,  315 ;  causes  distaste 
for  other  pursuits,  316,  317. 

Office-seeking,  305-320;  Lord  Ba 
con  on,  305 ;  Gen.  Cass  on,  305 ; 
our  national  malady,  305;  its 
virulence  under  Grant's  admin 
istration,  306  ;  in  Massachu 
setts,  307 ;  motives  that  prompt 
it,  309  ;  its  discouragements, 
310-315,  317. 

Oratory,  its  influence  perishable, 
47. 

Originality,  9, 10, 11, 251-278 ;  not 
an  initiation  of  what  is  new, 
252 ;  absolute,  an  impossibility, 
253-257,  260,  261,  267 ;  defined, 
255,  257 ;  how  regarded  by  the 


INDEX. 


343 


ancients,  256;  Campbell  and 
Voltaire  on,  259;  Goethe  on, 
260;  hindered  by  literary  train 
ing,  262;  Byron  on,  269;  diffi 
culty  of  attaining  to  it,  275 ;  in 
what  it  consists,  278. 


Paice,  Joseph,  his  politeness,  300. 

Painters,  eminent,  their  defects, 
112. 

Paley,  his  style,  7;  his  love  of 
angling,  186. 

Parallelisms,  literary,  not  neces 
sarily  plagiarisms,  275. 

Parker,  Theodore,  his  memory, 
165. 

Pascal,  Blaise,  his  memory,  156 ; 
on  fools,  173. 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  143. 

Perfection,  an  idea  of  the  mind 
only,  115,  116. 

Periodical  literature,  61-71. 

Pinkney,  William,  his  pride,  94. 

Pitt,  William,  his  abstinence  from 
wit,  205. 

Plagiarism, unjust  charges  of,  162, 
251,  276 ;  Heine  on,  260 ;  of  Ro 
man  writers,  267,  268;  distin 
guished  from  legitimate  bor 
rowing,  277. 

Playfulness,  intellectual,  200-206 ; 
denned,  200 ;  why  rare,  201 ;  of 
ten  misunderstood,  203,  204; 
"  not  respectable,"  205. 

Poets,  creators  and  creations,  259. 

Politeness, defined  and  illustrated, 
299-304. 

Pope,  Alexander,  43 ;  his  egotism, 
90, 99 ;  his  war  with  the  dunces, 
104;  his  irritability,  126;  his 
borrowings,  269. 

Porson,  his  memory,  158. 

Potter,  John,  M.P.,  139. 

Praise,  the  duty  of,  54-60;  dan- 
gerous  only  in  excess,  56,  57; 
Vauvcnargues  on,  57 ;  by  whom 
needed,  54,  58. 

Precocity,  intellectual,  favorable 
to  longevity,  229. 


Quakers,  their  longevity,  232. 
R 

Raphael,  his  Dresden  Madonna, 
38 ;  his  faults,  112. 

Reformers,  their  excesses  inevi 
table,  129,  130. 

Revision,  literary,  36,  37. 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  his  advice 
to  his  pupils,  261. 

Richardson,  novelist,  his  egotism, 
91. 

Robertson,  Rev.  Frederick  W.,  his 
studies,  35 ;  stung  by  criticism, 
105. 

Rogers,  Samuel,  on  condensation 
of  style,  84 ;  his  longevity,  223. 

Romilly,  Sir  Samuel,  his  talk,  285. 

Rubens,  his  merits  and  defects, 
125. 

Ruskin,  John,  on  cheerfulness, 
73 ;  on  great  men,  96 ;  on  com 
mitting  to  memory  prose  and 
poetry,  148. 


Salmasius,  Claudius,  his  egotism, 
91. 

Saville,  Sir  Henry,  on  wits,  247. 

Say,  J.  B.,  his  writing  habits, 
146. 

Scaliger,  Julius,  his  egotism,  91 ; 
his  memory,  156. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  his  painstaking, 
36;  his  literary  faults,  37,  38; 
on  the  treatment  of  libels,  103 ; 
his  baronial  ambition,  127 ;  his 
memory,  159;  his  dullness  at 
school,  248 ;  his  habits  of  in 
quiry,  281. 

Self-esteem,  its  uses,  58,  85-87; 
produces  opposite  effects  in 
men,  98. 

Shakspeare,  his  suggestiveness, 
44;  his  styles,  45;  his  mastery 
of  English,  45;  his  egotism, 
88;  his  excesses,  125,  126;  on 
fatness,  135 ;  on  angling,  187. 


344 


INDEX. 


Shedd,  Prof.  W.  G.  T,  quoted,  50. 

Shelley,  Percy  B.,  affected  by 
14  Cliristabel,"  43;  on  poets, 
259. 

Shenstonc,  William,  saying  of, 
42 ;  his  "  blues,"  72,  73. 

Shrewsbury,  the  Duke  of,  his 
disgust  with  politics,  313. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  43. 

Smith,  Alexander,  on  style,  20; 
charged  with  plagiarism,  265, 
266. 

Smith,  Sydney,  on  praise,  54; 
his  spirits,  74;  on  memory, 
155;  anecdotes  of,  200,  204; 
saying  of,  206. 

Southey,  Robert,  his  self-esteem, 
94.  ' 

Southey,  R.,  M.D.,  quoted,  220 

Spence,  Joseph,  44. 

Sportiveness,  not  allied  to  frivol 
ity,  206. 

Spurgeon,  Rev.  C.  H.,  his  style,  30 ; 
saying  of,  oO. 

Stendhal,  his  dislike  of  empha 
sis,  30. 

Sterne,  Laurence,  his  pains 
taking,  37;  his  sunny  tem 
perament,  74;  his  borrowings, 
276;  his  vanity,  93. 

Stock-sayings,  270. 

Stowe,  Mrs.  Harriet  B.,  on  Ru 
bens  and  Shakspeare,  125,  126. 

Style,  5-53 ;  defined,  6 ;  gives  im 
mortality  to  books,  7,  8;  the 
mark  of  originality  in  a  writer, 
9;  German,  16-18;  French,  18, 
19;  betrays  character,  20-23; 
mechanical  devices  of,  23 ;  the 
expression  of  personality,  28, 
29 ;  not  to  be  acquired  by  imi 
tation,  28,  29 ;  its  elements,  29- 
39 ;  freshness  a  vital  element  of 
it,  30;  choice  of  words,  30; 
simplicity  in,  31,  32;  should 
be  vivid  and  elegant,  31-34; 
Bulwer  on,  33;  Carlyle's,  13, 
14;  John  Neal's,  14;  Kant's, 
18;  Alexander  Smith  on,  20; 
Montaigne's,  21;  Napoleon's, 
21;  Julius  Cassar's,  21;  Lord 


Bacon's,  21 ;  Swift's,  21 ;  Addi- 
son's,  21 ;  Charles  Lamb's,  21 ; 
Sir  Thomas  Browne's,  22; 
Guizot's,  22;  Gibbon's,  8,  23; 
Macaulay's,  23,  25;  Burke's, 
25;  Robert  Hall's,  25;  W.  S. 
Landor's,  25;  Fronde's,  25; 
Huxley's,  25;  Edward  Ever 
ett's,  25 ;  J.  H.  Newman's,  25 ; 
R.  W.  Emerson's,  26;  Gold 
smith's,  27;  Gladstone's,  31; 
Grote's,  34;  Butler's,  34; 
Locke's,  34;  persons  insensible 
toit,35 ;  Napoleon  on, 35 ;  causes 
of  its  poverty,  36 ;  is  best  only 
relatively,  40;  when  good,  40, 
41 ;  its  charm  indefinable,  41, 
42 ;  its  magical  effects,  distinct 
from  the  thought,  42-44;  not 
the  dress  of  thought,  45 ;  anal 
ogy  between  it  and  costume,  46, 
47 ;  why  it  should  be  cultivated, 
47-53;  its  power,  49,  50;  takes 
rank  with  the  fine  arts,  50;  its 
cultivation  discouraged  by 
some  colleges,  50,  51 ;  Karl 
Hildebrand  on,  51;  how  ex 
cellence  in  it  is  acquired,  52; 
DeMaistre  on,  111. 
Swift,  his  style,  21,22;  his  viru 
lence,  126 ;  saying  of,  223. 


Tannahill,  the  poet,  105. 
Taylor,    Jeremy,    10;     on    fore 
boding,  83 ;  his  memory,  157. 
Temple,  Sir  William,  on  human 

ability,  116. 

Tennyson,  his  "  Lotus-Eaters,"  43. 
Thiers,  his  loquacity,  285. 
Thinkers,    great,    characterized, 

267. 
"Thompson,    Memory    Corner," 

164. 
Thorwaldsen,  sculptor,  anecdote 

of,  98 ;  origin  of  his  "  Mercury," 

273. 
Townshend,  Charles,  saying  of, 

137. 
Travel,  the  season  of,  234-240 ;  a 


INDEX. 


345 


mania  of  Americans,  234 ;  Em 
erson  on,  234 ;  its  benefits,  235- 
240;  expands  the  mind,  235; 
not  a  mere  fashion,  236;  de 
manded  by  body  and  mind,  235, 
236 ;  a  specific  for  ennui,  237 ; 
banishes  bigotry  and  prejudice, 
237-239 ;  to  whom  not  helpful, 


Vanity,  Coleridge  on,  86. 
Verse,  its  magical  effects,  44. 
Vices,  difficulty  of  subduing,  118, 

119. 

Vitelli,  Chiapin,  138. 
Voltaire,   anecdote    of,  157;    on 

originality,  259. 

W 

Walton,  Izaak,  his  style,  21 ;  on 
qualifications  of  an  angler,  193 ; 
song  by,  199. 

Wayland,  Dr.  Francis,  on  news 
paper  attacks,  106. 

Webster,  Daniel,  his  habits  as  an 
angler,  188;  his  refusal  of  a 
clerkship,  310;  on  political 
life,  313,  314. 

Wits,  their  melancholy,  74. 

Wolfe,  James,  his  vanity,  98. 

Wolsey,  Cardinal,  91. 

Words,  English,  that  were  once 
outlaws,  325,  326;  borrowed 


from  the  French,  326,  327; 
coined  by  Daniel  and  Cole 
ridge,  326 ;  the  use  of  new,  327. 

Wordsworth,  quoted,  76;  his 
egotism,  93,  98,  99 ;  his  love  of 
angling,  186. 

Worry,  its  effects,  230. 

"  Woven  wind,"  39. 

Writers,  mission  of  popular,  49 ; 
often  do  best  in  periodicals,  69, 
70 ;  not  all  fitted  to  write  large 
works,  70;  cannot  have  oppo 
site  excellences,  123,  124;  va 
riance  of  their  lives  from  their 
teachings,  128. 

Writing,  preparation  for,  35,  36, 
38;  the  best  spontaneous,  38; 
natural  manner  of,  39 ;  how  af 
fected  by  the  moral  character, 
39,40;  pleasures  of,  48. 


Xavier,  Francis,  his  memory,  159. 


Young,  Julian  Charles,  on  Words, 
worth  and  Coleridge,  116. 


Zephyr,  Monsieur,  75. 
Zimmerman,  his  love  of  angling, 

186. 
Zola,  Emile,  on  criticism,  107. 


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